Cattle farmer Terry Hayhurst has made several trips to Washington DC, and met with several US Department of Agriculture leaders.
The subject of tariffs is nothing new to him.
Although the constant back and forth with China and President Trump is cause for some concern.
Hayhurst says the tariffs on soybeans is already impacting his farm.
“Two years ago it was not uncommon for everybody to receive ten dollars a bushel for soybeans,” he said. “Right now the market is telling us they’re really only willing to go to about seven dollars and seventy cents.”
In their latest retaliation to the trade war, China has announced they will place tariffs on 60 billion dollars worth of US goods starting June 1.
“We’re all a little bit scared because there is that uncertainty,” said Hayhurst.
Corn and soybeans aren’t the only exports impacted by the tariffs.
“We export a lot of meat into China,” said Hayhurst.
While he is concerned over the market fluctuation, Hayhurst is optimistic for the turn out, “Everything I’ve read was just extremely positive. They felt like they’ve gotten some concessions that they wanted out of China. But then China stopped that all of a sudden.”
Hayhurst believes the President’s actions may require some patience, but he’s putting US farmers first, “So we’ve turned around and we went back and we’ve decided to get stricter too. It’s just that back and forth ping-pong at a high rate of speed.”
“And the match is intensifying is what we’re seeing right now,” he said. “So something could happen right away, maybe it takes longer. I don’t know we just have to figure out how to manage through it.”
