During an April 2 telephone conversation with constituents held by U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO), one caller from Greeley raised concerns about Trump’s decision to impose steep tariffs across the board, calling them a “regressive tax,” and asked Evans what he was doing to save his constituents money.
Evans defended Trump’s tariff plan, claiming that Americans were being taken advantage of and that the policy would bring down costs.
“I’ve actually sat down with a lot of our local farmers who have talked about how they’re being taken advantage of in the international community, in terms of things like beef production,” Evans said. “Obviously, Weld County is a major beef producer. And I’ve talked to a lot of local farmers who would like to be able to export U.S. beef to Southeast Asia, but the problem is, they can’t do it because of tariffs that countries in Southeast Asia have on U. S. beef, and there’s much lower tariffs on beef from some of our other international competitors.”
Comparing international trade to a game of pool, Evans went on to say that the president’s policy would “rebalance” an uneven status quo.
“What we saw the President do this afternoon was implement reciprocal tariffs, which means that if they have a tariff on us, then we have a tariff back on them, but if they lower their tariffs or get rid of their tariffs, then we lower or get rid of our tariffs as well,” Evans continued. “I’m a big believer in free trade, but free trade has to be fair trade as well.”
A spokesperson for Evans’ office told CTR that the congressman had heard from constituents who worked in the meat industry who believed that their access to foreign markets, particularly Vietnam and Australia, was limited. Similarly, they heard from onion and potato growers, who, according to Evans’ office, said that Mexico and Canada were engaging in unfair trade practices.
However, other Colorado farmers have voiced opposition to the tariff policy, saying that the trade war would drive foreign consumers away from American products. One farmer told the Colorado Times Recorder in March that many small farmers hadn’t recovered from the effects of the first trade war and that tariffs pushed foreign markets away from American grains and soybeans.
Combined with other efforts by the Trump administration to downsize the Department of Agriculture, some farmers feel like they have been abandoned by the federal government for a trade policy that they have yet to see the benefits of.
Evans has argued that the tariff policy would ultimately bring back jobs to the district, particularly in the energy and agriculture sectors.
“Reciprocal tariffs ensure free and fair trade for American producers, including energy producers,” Evans said in a written statement to the Colorado Times Recorder. “For instance, talk of tariffs has opened conversations with European leaders to replace dirty Russian natural gas with cleaner American natural gas, which would reduce annual carbon emissions by thousands of tons annually. Restoring balance in international trade brings more jobs to Colorado, protects the environment by increasing responsible production in the United States (vs dirty coal and slave labor in places like China or Russia), and lowers costs for Americans.”
Experts have raised doubts about whether the policy will benefit U.S. industries broadly, and agriculture and oil and gas in particular.
George DeMartino is a professor of international economics at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and the co-director of the university’s master’s program in Global Economic Affairs.
“It seems to me that these kinds of predictions are founded on political bias rather than any sort of rational analysis,” DeMartino told the Colorado Times Recorder. “Concerning the major claim that Representative Evans makes [that tariffs have brought Europe to the table on US energy exports] … There is outright dishonesty. Europe is not phasing out Russian energy imports due to anything that the Trump administration is doing. In fact, it is the Biden administration that should get credit for nudging Europe in that direction since the decision was taken in May 2022.”
The European Commission, alongside other member states of the European Union, formalized an agreement in 2022 to phase out Russian gas imports by 2027 in reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The claim that Europe is phasing out Russian gas imports owing to the new reciprocal tariffs is, in short, bewildering,” DeMartino added.
DeMartino said the “reciprocal tariffs” imposed by the Trump administration were a punitive measure being wielded “even against US allies.”
According to DeMartino, the claim that reciprocal tariffs would benefit local industries in Colorado was, at its core, flawed.
“The problem with those arguments [on reciprocal tariffs] … is that they reflect the analysis of one industry in isolation,” DeMartino said. “Which means that they are looking at the impact on those industries as if there won’t be other effects through the economy that harm those very industries. To really understand the impact of the trade war, you need to look at interactions among industries.”
On the energy and agriculture sectors specifically, DeMartino was skeptical that the administration’s tariff policy was going to have the intended effect.
“For instance, if the trade war undermines economic growth, which is very likely, then market demand for energy will fall in the US, no matter what protections exist from, say, Canadian energy imports,” DeMartino explained. “In terms of agriculture, it’s hard to fathom how a trade war with China helps US agricultural producers. It’s far more likely to encourage China to look elsewhere, permanently, to meet its food needs.”
To DeMartino’s point, the tariffs levied during the first Trump administration hurt American agricultural exports for targeted crops, and the market has yet to recover. According to analysis from the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, after the United States increased tariffs on China, U.S. exports fell by $27 billion to $30 billion from 2018 to 2019. In place of American goods, China turned to countries like Brazil and Argentina for soybeans and other grains. As a result of the trade war, it’s estimated that US exports declined by $32 billion.
“Even producers of those crops that Colorado doesn’t itself export to China, but which other American producers do, will be harmed as there is likely to be reduced market demand, and hence, reduced prices for agricultural products,” DeMartino said. “And at the same time, you’re likely to get increased costs for all the inputs into agricultural production owing to the increased price of imports, and increased prices by domestic producers who now have protection from international competitors. So it’s a mess, and I doubt there are many Colorado ag producers feeling comfortable with what’s now unfolding.”
Although Evans’ office did not have a specific response to the criticism of Trump’s trade policy by economists, it said that Evans stands by his previous statements on the Trump tariffs.
While the Trump administration has backed off somewhat on tariffs recently, the trade policy is still being pursued as economic tensions continue to brew with countries like China, Mexico, and Canada.
DeMartino believes that the tariff policy, similar to other trade wars, will not have the intended effect and will likely continue to harm American producers and consumers alike.
“As for the broader point that bringing a sledgehammer to the world trading system via what the Trump administration is calling ‘reciprocal tariffs’ … is somehow going to restore American economic and political dominance, generate American jobs, and at the same time lower prices, reflects a … simplistic understanding of the global economy,” De Martino said. “It’s a schoolyard bully’s way of dealing with insecurity and, just as in the schoolyard, that approach doesn’t end well in the economic arena.”
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