With fall harvest coming, American farmers are still waiting for tariff deals

In Klum, North Dakota, soybean farmers are gearing up for the fall harvest, including Josh Gackle.

“The crop looks good right now,” he said. “We just need some place to sell it.”

Gackle, who also chairs the American Soybean Association, said some of the world’s biggest markets for U.S. soy aren’t buying this year.

“If the exporters have no market, it trickles down to the local grain elevators and the railroads here in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, elsewhere,” he said.

Purdue’s Farmer Sentiment Index for August comes out later Tuesday morning. July’s reading showed President Donald Trump’s trade war is weighing on farmers who may be struggling to market their crops overseas. But the administration is working on that in trade negotiations.

Last month on social media, President Trump called on China to quadruple its purchases of American soy. His administration also wants countries like Vietnam and Thailand to commit to purchasing more U.S. farm commodities as part of tariff negotiations.

Even if fresh tariff deals help American crops compete in overseas markets, “if we are able to capture business with a target country, and they were buying from somebody else,” said Arlan Suderman, a commodities economist with StoneX — like Brazil or Argentina, which have ramped up production during the trade war — “then that means that somebody else has excess supplies.”

That could drive down the global price of commodities like wheat and soybeans, he added. And that isn’t good for American farmers, either.