The Dictatorship

Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs and Iran war

Published

3 months ago

April 14, 2026

Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs and Iran war

WAHOO, Neb. (AP) — Strong winds whipped around Doug Bartek, a fifth-generation farmer, as he headed into a grain bin to shovel soybeans onto a conveyor chute. The 60-year-old was anxious at the onset of the spring planting season, rattling off the long list of issues affecting his family’s livelihood at their 2,000-acre farm near Wahoo, Nebraska.

The high cost of fuel, equipment, and fertilizer — compounded by the Iran war — and also tariffs, perceived “price gouging” by suppliers, and low soybean prices driven by a global supply glut. All of it weighs on Bartek, who is chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Association.

“Our biggest struggles are our inputs, be it fertilizer, seed, chemical, parts,” Bartek said. “There has been so much drastic markup in all of these. And I just kind of feel like the farmer’s kind of painted in the corner.”

Soybeans from last year's harvest are loaded into a truck at Doug Bartek's farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) — Soybeans from last year’s harvest are loaded into a truck at Doug Bartek’s farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Bartek’s concerns are shared by many Midwest soybean producers. Costs, such as equipment, have crept up over time while soybean prices have stayed low. Tariffs levied by the Trump administration last year and the resulting monthslong trade war with China only made things worse, they say. Then the Iran war bottled up shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, restricting global fertilizer supplies and sending fertilizer prices sky high. A ceasefire deal announced April 7 raised hope that bottlenecks in the strait would abate, but the future of the agreement was uncertain.

AP AUDIO: Already under financial pressure, Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs, Iran war

AP correspondent Julie Walker reports already under financial pressure, Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs, Iran war.

“A lot of producers are pretty nervous going into this year,” said Justin Sherlock, a soybean farmer and president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. “It looks like we’re going to have another year of negative returns.”

Years of rising costs, low soybean prices

Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed, food and biofuels, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. That hasn’t always been the case. Before the 1960s soybeans weren’t a major crop in the U.S, according to Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. It wasn’t until the 1990s that soybean production accelerated due to international demand — primarily from China — and soybeans and corn are now dominant in U.S. agriculture.

But U.S. soybean farmers, who typically also grow corn, have been facing financial issues for years even before the onset of the Iran war. Soybean prices have been persistently low in recent years. The global market has been awash in soybeans, driven in part by Brazil, which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest soybean producer years ago.

“If we look at global soybean production over the past several years, it continues to set record, after record, after record,” Hart said. “There’s been just large supplies globally, and that has led to depressed prices.”

Dalton Bartek works a field to prepare for planting soybeans on his family's farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) — Dalton Bartek works a field to prepare for planting soybeans on his family’s farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Meanwhile, Midwest soybean farmers’ costs have risen. Overall farm production expenses, including seed and pesticide, have increased over time, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Operating costs for soybean production have stayed elevated since 2020 and are projected to increase again in 2026, according to the agency.

The cost of land also is a major issue for farmers, experts say. Midwest crop land values have increased. And most regional farmers rent some of their land, according to Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.

Bartek, who rents three-quarters of his land, said landowners are increasing rents, causing further financial strain.

“There’s a lot of what I call absentee landowners that have absolutely no idea what goes on on the farm,” he said. “All they know is their taxes went up and you get to make up the difference, some way, somehow.”

“They’re very concerned about negative margins driven by low prices and high cost,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of farmers. “There’s just a liquidity cash crunch for a lot of them and they’re just trying to figure out how to deal with everything.”

The number of farms in the U.S. has shrunk over time and consolidation in farming is a long-term trend, though farmers’ financial pressures wrought by high input costs and low commodity prices have contributed, Hart said. Larger farms tend to be more competitive and depend on large, expensive machinery.

“The financial reserves need(ed) on a farm are much greater than they used to be,” Hart said. “We’re a bit more sensitive to the financial conditions these days because so much capital is being utilized within the farm business.”

Tariffs, trade war have lasting impacts

Market forces aren’t the only issue weighing on farmers. Sweeping tariffs levied by President Donald Trump in April 2025 exacerbated a trade war with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. China responded with retaliatory tariffs and effectively boycotted U.S. soybeans, cutting off a major export market for Midwest farmers and driving the price of soybeans even lower.

“When that was announced and soybean prices basically collapsed, if you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK,” said Mike Cerny, a soybean, and winter wheat corn farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin. “If you had a mortgage due or payments due or cash flow needs and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough.”

Doug Bartek shovels soybeans in a bin on his farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The U.S. and China eventually reached a deal in late 2025. Beijing committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. China has since met its initial soybean purchase goal and the Trump administration also rolled out a $12 billion temporary aid package in December to boost farmers affected by the trade war.

But the damage is already done, experts and farmers say. While China’s renewed purchases and the federal payments are helping, it’s not enough to recover farmers’ losses. Even after federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per harvested acre of soybeans in the 2025 crop, according to the American Soybean Association. And the trade war further pushed China toward competing soybean e xporters, such as Brazil — accelerating a trend of declining U.S. soybean exports to China.

“When China decided to stop purchasing, we couldn’t find enough other markets to replace those sales,” Hart said. “We’re still feeling the impacts today. When you look at where soybean exports are today versus where we would normally expect them to be, we’re still running anywhere from 15% to 20% behind normal.”

Joseph Glauber, former chief economist at the Department of Agriculture between 2008 and 2014, said global competitors to U.S. soybean farmers gained from the trade war.

“When China has put on tariffs against the U.S. they’ve tended to buy then from Brazil or Argentina, largely Brazil,” Glauber added. “We’re not nearly as dominant in the world as we used to be in terms of the global export market for soybeans.”

Iran war drove up fuel, fertilizer costs

After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, a severe slowdown in shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz sent the price of oil soaring. The shipping disruption also largely stopped the export of nitrogen fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf and limited access to key fertilizer ingredients. The price of urea, the most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, skyrocketed.

Soybeans don’t require nitrogen fertilizer, but it’s vital for corn and most soybean farmers also grow corn. About half the global supply of urea comes from the Middle East, and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are two of the top sources of U.S. fertilizer imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire last week that included reopening the strait of Hormuz, but traffic remained slowed amid disagreements over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, and the price of urea remains elevated.

Many Midwest farmers bought their fertilizer well in advance of the spring planting season. But some farmers who didn’t buy early face elevated prices. Dave Walton, a corn, soybean, and hay farmer in Iowa and vice president of the American Soybean Association, said in March that some of his neighbors didn’t have cash on hand last fall to buy fertilizer and were struggling to budget for fertilizer due to high prices.

Doug Bartek transfers soybeans from a storage bin to a truck on his farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The war also caused gasoline and diesel prices to surgecausing further headaches for farmers. Oil prices dropped following the ceasefire announcement, but the war and the closure of the strait will have lasting impacts on farmers, said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. Facilities in the Middle East that are critical for exporting chemicals, oil and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the war and it will take time for supply chains to recover, he said.

“Facilities have been hit, like liquid natural gas plants,” Goldstein added. “You are also looking at a big supply crunch in commodity chemicals, which are the inputs for crop chemicals.”

“We burn a lot of diesel fuel,” said Chris Gould, a corn and soybean farmer in Maple Park, Illinois. “It’s hard to say if I’m gonna come out ahead or behind on this whole deal. But I suspect I’m gonna come out behind.”

Concerns about the future

Farmers’ financial problems are showing up in some measures. Farm bankruptcies, while still relatively low, continued to climb in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a survey of 400 farmers conducted by researchers at the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture in late March, almost half said their farm operation is financially worse off than it was a year ago.

Goldstein, the Morningstar analyst, said farmers’ high costs and low revenues contributed to the spike in bankruptcies between 2024 and 2025. If costs rise faster than crop prices going forward, he added, that “would strain farmers again and likely lead to more bankruptcies.”

Doug Bartek talks about high production costs and tough market conditions for the soybeans he grows on his farm near Wahoo, Neb., on Monday, April 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

After 43 years of farming, Bartek said the smell of fresh dirt still gets him excited for spring planting. But he’s also heard of farmer suicides, bankruptcies and “retirement sales” where farmers are forced to auction off their operations due to financial problems. Bartek compares farmers to gamblers who put “millions of dollars in the dirt” hoping for returns.

At times, Bartek doubts his own decision to go into farming. He’s also worried about his son, who purchased a farm a few years ago.

Bartek wonders: “Did I do the right thing helping him get into farming?”

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Kelety reported from Phoenix.

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This story is a collaboration between Lee Enterprises and The Associated Press.

The Dictatorship

ICE should permanently end vehicle stops

Published

3 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Christmas. 15, 2026, 1:16 PM EDT

ByDavid J. Bier

Following two killings of motorists in two weeks in Maine and Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement briefly suspended most vehicle stops to retrain its agents. The suspension implicitly conceded the obvious — ICE could have prevented these deaths — but President Donald Trump quickly overruled the agency, ordering it to resume the stops.

The president posted on social media Wednesday that “we cannot give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” But he’s wrong. His own adviser, White House border czar Tom Homan, has admitted that vehicle stops are not an important enforcement tool, and that permanently ending them would better protect ICE agents, their targets and the public.

ICE agents appear to relish the car chases and often fail to stop the suspect before they drive away.

It’s true that ICE officers receive less training on vehicle stops. That’s because, before this administration, most arrestees came straight from federal, state or local custody, and when ICE had to go to the streets, it carefully planned operations — surveilling suspects to learn their routines, sometimes for weeksand working as a team of agents and creating a pre-enforcement action plan.

To speed up arrests, however, ICE reportedly eliminated the pre-enforcement planning last year as it started targeting areas more than specific people. “It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’” one former ICE official told NBC News. Enforcement went from targeted and planned to indiscriminate and opportunistic, which led to more chaotic interactions.

Reflecting this lack of planning, both of the immigrants shot and killed in the past two weeks were not the individuals ICE agents were originally looking to arrest, according to lawmakers who spoke to officials. A similar situation played out in Minnesota earlier this year, when ICE agents mistook a DoorDash driver for their target before shooting him after he ran into his home. (That officer was charged after video evidence from a city traffic camera contradicted his account.)

Even when pre-arrest surveillance of a specific suspect is conducted, ICE agents appear to relish the car chases and often fail to stop the suspect before they drive away. One Department of Homeland Security supervisor described the attitude to The New York Times as “we’re adrenaline junkies who want action, foot chases, car pursuits.”

In October 2025, for instance, agents waited outside the home of Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok influencer, whom ICE was particularly interested in arresting. But rather than leap immediately into action, they let him get into his car. This led to a vehicle stop at which an ICE agent shot Parias, and the bullet ricocheted into a U.S. marshal.

On Fox News Tuesday, Homan admitted that there’s no downside. “I hear a lot of noise right now, ‘this will affect ICE arrests.’ It’s not going to,” he said.

Another shooting in California in April 2026 followed the same pattern. ICE did the surveillance but let the suspect get into their car. This appears to have been intentional. In June, surveillance video captured what appears to be a targeted ICE arrest in Milwaukee, in which officers allowed the suspect several minutes to get a snack and re-enter his vehicle before the team moved in for the arrest.

When stops do happen, as a Wall Street Journal investigation found earlier this yearICE agents commonly use tactics that place themselves in unnecessary risk: failing to tell drivers to turn off their engines, grabbing cars when they start to move, placing their bodies — rather than vehicles — in the way, and then shooting at uncooperative drivers.

DHS’ use-of-force policy already gets most of these issues right. It prohibits officers from “intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.” It bars shooting drivers unless there is an imminent risk of serious bodily harm.

Outside of a terrorist attack where the car is the weapon, shooting the driver does not lessen the threat; it enhances it. After an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot Renee Good, the car didn’t stop. It accelerated until it crashed. In Maine, ICE officers had to try to grab the car on foot to stop it after the injured driver lost control, and the car circled blindly. Eventually, an ICE agent used his vehicle to stop it.

ICE’s suspension of most vehicle stops would force agents to spend time learning new tactics, but doing so would have gone a long way to protect agents, targets and bystanders. Rather than a temporary reprieve, in fact, ICE should have made it permanent.

On Fox News Tuesday, Homan admitted that there’s no downside. “I hear a lot of noise right now, ‘this will affect ICE arrests.’ It’s not going to,” he said. “Before he gets into the car, you can arrest him then. You can wait until the vehicle gets to its destination,” he said — unless the target is a violent criminal. He added, “If we can take that 2-ton ‘weapon’ away from them, that’s good.”

Homan is admitting what the record shows: ICE has been endangering its officers and others for no enforcement benefit. Ending vehicle stops won’t end all the problems, or even all the deaths. But continuing them means more danger for ICE personnel and the public.

David J. Bier

David J. Bier is the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

The Dictatorship

If recent history is any guide, Trump’s primetime address won’t be a success

Published

3 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

If recent history is any guide, Trump’s primetime address won’t be a success

Donald Trump hasn’t exactly been shy about the point of the prime-time speech he intends to deliver Thursday night. During an appearance on Newsmax this week, for example, the president peddled familiar, tiresome nonsense: “Our elections are crooked, and we’ve got to straighten them out.”

A day later at an unrelated White House event, he said he didn’t want to go into a lot of detail about what would be included in his address, though he did tell reporters“What we’re going to be talking about Thursday is, it doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”

The president neglected to mention that Americans already have a country, as well as free and fair elections.

But while the public waits to hear Trump’s latest conspiratorial pitch, it’s worth appreciating the fact that the format he has chosen has not exactly served him well.

In recent decades, prime-time presidential addresses are generally reserved for major announcements about pressing matters of great significance. Trump’s prime-time presidential addresses, however, tend to be duds.

Consider some of the more notable examples.

April 1, 2026: The president delivered remarks on the war in Iran, though once it was over, no one seemed to have any idea what the point of the speech was. He presented no plan. He offered no coherent vision. Trump meandered from dubious point to dubious point and peddled a contradictory message about a possible endpoint, leaving many viewers even more concerned about the war. The New York Times’ Helene Cooper summarized“Trump has concluded speaking after 19 minutes. … This was a rehash of his Truth Social posts over the past month.”

The speech had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

Dec. 17, 2025: Trump delivered a prime-time address, ostensibly to talk about how great the first year of his second term was. What he presented, however, was 18 minutes of combative presidential blame-shifting and excuse-makingpackaged in the unsubtle desperation of a man who didn’t seem to understand why so much of the public failed to appreciate his systemic failures and embarrassments.

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

March 11, 2020: As the Covid-19 pandemic started to wreak havoc in the United States, Trump delivered a weird Oval Office address in which he flubbed his own policyprompting White House officials to spend the rest of the evening clarifying that the president didn’t exactly mean what he said.

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

Jan. 8, 2019: In the middle of a government shutdown he was responsible for, Trump delivered an Oval Office address for no apparent reason. Over the course of nine minutes, he presented no plan, offered no material, endorsed no solution and had no factsas evidenced by the avalanche of falsehoods he peddled to the nation. Rachel Maddow asked as part of MS NOW’s live coverage, “Why did he just do this? … Why did this just happen?”

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

Taken together, it’s hard not to wonder if this just isn’t Trump’s best format.

A member of the president’s team told Axios this week that he wants to do prime-time speeches because they “give a sense of importance to what he’s saying.”

I don’t doubt that this is the idea behind the addresses, but as Hearst columnist Philip Bump explainedTrump and his team apparently haven’t figured out “that he’s dragging the gravitas down rather than it lifting him up.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Is there a single Republican on Capitol Hill today willing to speak up to Trump?

Published

3 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Is there a single Republican on Capitol Hill today willing to speak up to Trump?

Christmas. 15, 2026, 1:02 PM EDT

This is the July 15, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter.Subscribe hereto get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.

In his final speech as president, Ronald Reagan talked about the importance of immigrants to America’s heritage.

“You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Johan Sebastian Guerrero came to America from Colombia. The 25-year-old husband and father worked two jobs to support his wife and 3-year-old daughter.

On Monday in Biddeford, Maine, ICE agents shot him dead through his car window. His wife knelt weeping over him in the street as their daughter watched.

Johan wasn’t even the person they were looking for.

The young father’s killers were whisked away, like King George III would have protected British troops who gunned down colonists 250 years ago.

Now as then, no body cameras, no investigations, no justice.

Source: Gallup poll of 1,001 U.S. adults, conducted June 1-15, 2026, margin of error: ±4 percentage points

INFLATION DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

Wednesday’s June inflation report can be read two ways: Since May, prices fell — driven by the drop in oil and gas. But compared to a year ago, prices are still 3.5% higher, which is exactly how much wages have risen over the same period.

In other words, consumers have not achieved any “real” growth in purchasing power over the past year.

Watch Steve Rattner break down the numbers below.

WHAT THEY SAID

John Heilemann on GOP politics

“The last things Ken Paxton and Susan Collins want to talk about are mass deportation and ICE on one hand and election fraud on the other. Yet those are the two issues in the headlines in Texas, in Maine, and all across the country. Donald Trump is bringing Republicans a political nightmare heading into November.”

Sen. Chris Coons on Maine ICE shooting

“Hearing the account of Sebastián’s widow and 3-year-old wailing by the side of the car after he had been shot point-blank is just heartbreaking. All of us need to step up and do a better job of holding accountable those to whom we give the power of life and death. This is a fundamental challenge to civil liberties and to justice in our nation.”

Lisa Rubin on Todd Blanche

“I knew Todd Blanche briefly when I was in private practice, and I witnessed the adoration firsthand. He was liked for many reasons. He was a regular guy, the paradigmatic lawyer that jurors would want to have a beer with. The guy that I see on our screens growling from the podium at the Department of Justice is entirely inconsistent with the person that I briefly knew.”