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Tariffs cause more than just lost market share and shattered supply chains.
Tariffs hurt people. They make it harder for families to make ends meet. They damage — and sometimes destroy — businesses that Americans have spent years working to build from the ground up.
There’s a real, human cost to tariffs. It occurs every day, across the country.
Tariffs Hit American Farmers
Take Richard Wilkins, a Delaware soybean farmer whose business has taken a serious hit from trade barriers.
Wilkins’ farm has been hit hard by foreign tariffs on his crop. These tariffs, which were issued in retaliation to our own, have prevented farmers like Wilkins from selling to one of the world’s largest markets: China.
American soybean farmers are practically cut off from that market.
The damage has been severe. The value of Wilkins’ crop has seen a 20 percent reduction in its price.
While Wilkins is well-established, and can weather the tariffs, “younger farmers who have been in business only a few years don’t have that safety net,” he said.
In a profession with a relatively high median age, these tariffs are boxing the next generation of farmers out of the market.
Tariffs Hit Manufacturers
Scott Harris, founder of Catoctin Distillery in Purcellville, Virginia, isn’t having an easy time, either.
Harris’ distillery sees great business in Europe, where customers enjoy his whiskey. But European tariffs imposed on his product raise its price beyond what his customers are willing to pay. In response, his customers began to purchase their whiskey elsewhere.
Where?
“Ireland, whiskey from Scotland, whiskey from Japan,” Harris said. “India has very good whiskey.”
While Harris had plans to expand his company, the severe economic uncertainty created by these tariffs — on both sides of the Atlantic — has made that prospect, for now, impossible.
Tell Congress We Need Trade
Scott Harris and Richard Wilkins are just two examples of how tariffs hurt real Americans.
Americans businesses and families don’t need tariffs, which gamble their livelihoods. They need trade, which provides high-quality and low-cost goods to American families — from the food on our tables to the cars in our driveways.