'Crisis': US farm exports collapse to pandemic-era levels as Trump's tariffs ramp up

The U.S. farming sector is on the brink of crisis as President Donald Trump's trade war implodes America's ability to ship crops abroad, reported CNBC on Tuesday morning.

This follows warnings from lawmakers in Trump's own party who represent agricultural areas, fearing the negative impact on the mounting taxes and retaliatory taxes from other countries.

"What began as a rapid drop in U.S. imports as shippers cut orders from manufacturing partners around the world has now extended into a nationwide export slump, with the U.S. agricultural sector and top farm products including soybeans, corn and beef taking the hardest hit," said the report. "The latest trade data shows that a slide in U.S. exports to the world, and China in particular, that began in January now extends to most U.S. ports, according to trade tracker Vizion, which analyzed U.S. export container bookings for the five-week period before President Donald Trump’s tariffs began and the five weeks after the tariffs took effect."

The numbers, per the report, are some of the worst that have been seen since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted supply chains in 2020.

“We haven’t seen anything like this since the disruptions of summer 2020,” Vizion's CEO Kyle Henderson told CNBC. “That means goods expected to arrive in the next six to eight weeks simply won’t. With tariffs driving costs higher, small businesses are pausing orders. Products that once moved reliably are now twice as expensive, forcing importers into tough decisions.”

Even before these numbers, the report noted, the agricultural industry "has been warning of a 'crisis' and ports data is showing more evidence of lack of ability to move product out to global markets." Some of the worst hit areas are Pacific Northwest ports like Portland and Tacoma, which specialize in shipping U.S. crops to Asia; the Port of Portland has already seen a 51 percent drop in exports.

One of the core rationales for Trump enacting the tariffs in the first place was his paranoia over trade deficits, or countries sending more imports to the U.S. than they take in exports.

Economists have long agreed trade deficits aren't an inherently bad thing, but Trump and his advisers are convinced they are an indicator of unfair foreign trade practices, and explicitly set their tariffs based on the size of each country's trade deficit.