By Kirk Siegler
It’s not just importers who are worried about higher prices from tariffs in the U.S. these days. Businesses that rely on exports, like wheat growers, are growing increasingly nervous as well.
This was apparent following a recent trade delegation visit through the Pacific Northwest that included mill operators and grain buyers from four Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Such visits are routine, especially at harvest time. Washington state is the nation’s top wheat exporting state - about 90% of the dryland wheat grown here is trucked or shipped by river barge to west coast ports. These buyers are eager to visit farmers and see the crop up close because they buy so much of it. But nothing right now is routine.
The visit follows President Trump slapping a roughly 20% tariff on imports from those countries and amid concern that they will respond with retaliatory tariffs of their own, potentially driving up costs for American farmers even more.
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