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'This is pushing me left': Beekeeper who voted for Trump three times hit hard by economy
April 11, 2025 12:23PM ET
A beekeeper who voted for president Donald Trump every chance he got expressed regret over his choice in the most recent election.
North Carolina farmer Jim Hartman, who operates Secret Garden Bees, told CNN that he voted for Trump all three times, but he's not sure he would have made the same decision in November if he knew what the president's tariffs and funding cuts would do to his honey business, reported The Daily Beast.
“I never thought I was going to lose this much money this fast,” Hartman said.
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Hartman said he could lose half his annual income due to Trump's tariffs and Elon Musk's cuts to the federal budget, saying nearly half of his business comes from selling honey to the government to use at food banks and in schools through a Department of Agriculture that was suddenly ended.
“For a lot of other local farmers around here, that was a major source of reliable revenue,” he said. “For me, you know, it’s going to cost me around $150,000 a year, roughly 50 percent of my revenue. That’s a massive hit.”
The tariffs haven't impacted his business yet, but they could the next time he needs to purchase some needed supplies.
“We just bought our year’s supply of bottles from Taiwan and our year’s supply of corks from Portugal about 3 weeks ago, so that would have been another $50,000 or $60,000 out of my pocket,” Hartman said.
The farmer was also troubled by the president's approach to the tariffs, which he suspended for 90 days for most countries but raised China's rate to 145 percent this week.
"[He's] flip-flopped so many times you can’t take it to the bank," Hartman said.
The Army veteran and lifelong Republican has been taking stock of his choices during the early months of Trump's presidency, although he doesn't blame him personally for the economic pain.
“Stuff like this is pushing me left,” Hartman told the Wall Street Journal last month in a separate interview. "The people he’s appointed and the way they’re going about things, it’s not okay."
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