Tariffs are Killing Eastern Washington's Agricultural Export Business
Joel Connelly
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Voters in agricultural communities of Central Washington asked for nothing when they voted for Donald Trump last November. And that’s exactly what they got.
The heartland of our state’s multibillion-dollar crop and orchard export economy is in the crosshairs of Trump Administration’s trade and tariff policies. Trump is putting it all together: immigrant undocumented farmworkers are targeted for deportation; high tariffs are being slapped on imports which will lead to retaliatory tariffs on stuff we ship abroad.
“I represent a trade economy: I represent the success of what innovation and trade get you,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told a bevy of administration officials at a recent Senate Commerce Committee hearing. She cited a familiar figure–that two of every five Washington jobs is linked in some form to our export/import economy.
Washington exported $7.6 billion in agricultural products last year. In the last decade, I and other scribes poked fun at Gov. Inslee when he led door-opening trips (“junkets”) across the Pacific to market our cherries and apples. Jokes about frostiness flew through the cold warehouse full of Asia-bound spuds where Cantwell held a press briefing. We should not laugh. Seventy percent of our potato crop is exported, along with 30 percent of apples (largely to India), and 25 percent of cherries (mainly China-bound).
https://www.postalley.org/2025/08/19/tariffs-are-killing-eastern-washingtons-agricultural-export-business/