Right now, rural America is facing a crisis of uncertainty.

In Minnesota and across the country, farmers are having trouble making ends meet amid low commodity prices and increasing costs, and farm financial conditions are deteriorating. Farmer loan repayment rates continue to decline in Minnesota and across the Midwest, and small farm bankruptcies have reached a five-year high.

Why?

Our farmers can’t offset the toll the administration’s tariffs are taking on the rural economy.

As I visited family farmers across western and southern Minnesota last month they told me just how much the tariffs were hurting them. As one farmer said, this moment is a “perfect storm of ugly.”

The administration’s tariffs are increasing critical input costs — with fertilizer prices up $100 per ton and some farm machinery and equipment parts up 10% — at the same time that retaliatory tariffs are drying up key export markets. It’s even harder for our family farms to survive.

There’s no doubt that our adversaries like China use trade to manipulate markets and hurt American workers. That’s why I support targeted tariffs like those used by the previous Trump, Biden and Obama administrations to counter China’s steel dumping. But across-the-board tariffs — especially those placed on our neighbors and partners — only raise costs for consumers, hurt small businesses and farmers, and threaten jobs.

This administration’s across-the-board tariffs are damaging international markets that farmers have spent decades building. Around 20 percent of all U.S. agricultural products are typically sold abroad. Minnesotan farmers export even more — more than one third of our agricultural production, making our state the fourth largest for agricultural exports — but those markets are being put at risk. The first three countries the President targeted with tariffs — Mexico, Canada and China — are our top three agricultural export markets and account for half of all U.S. agricultural exports.

For example, China has not purchased a single bushel of the 2025 soybean crop so far this year, compared to more than 250 million bushels at this time last year. This problem has only been made worse by competitors like Argentina that have undercut our farmers to sell soybeans to China. Unfortunately, the administration is working to give Argentina $40 billion in aid instead of pushing them to stop undermining our farmers.

The impact of tariffs on markets for farmers extends well beyond soybeans. Pork, beef, and fresh fruit and vegetable exports are all falling — leaving farmers without valuable markets to sell their crops.

Despite the effects on our producers, the administration has doubled down on these tariffs. And while our farmers need help now, short-term solutions that fail to address the long-term impact on farmers’ access to international markets are just a band-aid. Ultimately, farmers want trade, not aid.

The only way to restore the export markets that farmers have spent decades building is to reverse these across-the-board tariffs. That needs to happen before lasting damage is done to our relationships with our trading partners.

During the trade war in the president’s first term, U.S. agriculture suffered $27 billion in losses. We never fully recovered.

That’s why I am leading the fight in Congress to overturn these across-the-board tariffs and give our farmers the certainty they need in the long-term.

Last month, 15 Senators — including three Republicans — joined me to reintroduce our bill to undo President Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports. I’ve also joined a bipartisan group of 14 Senators — seven Republicans, led by Senator Chuck Grassley, and seven Democrats — to introduce legislation that would reassert Congress’ constitutional authority to set tariffs.

These bills are the first steps we need to take to address the mounting costs facing our farmers and restore some certainty to our trade policy.

We must work across the aisle to end this crisis of uncertainty. I will work with anyone to restore our farmers’ markets to give them one less reason to worry about their balance books so they can focus on continuing to feed and fuel the world.

— Amy Klobuchar represents the state of Minnesota in the U.S. Senate