By Ryan Hanrahan
Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration collected an estimated $958 million in revenue from selected agricultural inputs from February to October of 2025, according to North Dakota State University’s monthly Agricultural Trade Monitor. Of that, about $530 million came from farm machinery, $273 million came from agricultural chemicals, $110 million came from fertilizers and $44 million came from seeds.
“Despite their negative effects on producers, the collected tariffs represent a relatively small share of production expenses,” NDSU reported. “…The tariff revenue collected on these three input categories represents 0.2% of seed expenditures, 1.3% of pesticide costs, and 0.3% of fertilizer costs. It is important to note that these estimates do not account for tariffs collected on other inputs in the agricultural supply chain, including steel, aluminum, and parts used in machinery and equipment, which may impose additional costs on U.S. producers.”
For fertilizer tariffs in particular, AgWeb’s Bill Watts reported that the full cost “and then some – may have been passed through to farmers in 2025, according to data released Tuesday by North Dakota State University (NDSU).”
“The report observes that when fertilizer tariffs were imposed in April, U.S. fertilizer prices significantly rose relative to Canadian prices, which weren’t subject to the tariff,” Watts reported. “The premium for DAP, measured by the difference between prices in the U.S. Northern Plains versus Canadian prices, climbed to $343 per metric ton at its peak during the tariff period, marking an increase of $172 per metric ton from pre-tariff baseline levels. MAP and urea each saw a similar divergence.”
“So who pays the cost of tariffs? The burden can either be distributed between exporters, who eat the cost by reducing export prices, or importer and end users, who pay higher prices,” Watts reported. “The analysis of the U.S.-Canada spread ‘indicates that domestic importers and farmers bore the tariff burden substantially,’ says the report, noting price movements during the tariff period seemed to exceed the direct cost of the tariff itself.”
Source : illinois.edu