'What does that mean?' Odd messaging leaves even Trump's staunchest supporters bemused

Trade agreements that took decades to establish are in jeopardy due to President Donald Trump's tariffs — and those policies could do irreparable harm to the farming industry, according to a new report.

The U.S. government spent years building overseas markets for soybeans, wheat and other crops, and farmers rely on imported tractor parts and fertilizer, and farmers across the Midwest and West – many of whom still fly Trump 2024 flags over their barns – are worried the president's trade war will ruin them, reported NPR.

"If you turn [a trade] relationship off, it's a lot harder to turn it back on and get that back when, in the interim, the person that you've traded with, they've found somebody else," said Washington State farmer Jim Moyer.

Moyer said wheat farmers like himself are still recovering from Trump ripping up the popular Trans-Pacific Partnership during his first term, and he said there seems to be a disconnect between the White House and farm country.

"You know, I don't know, I try not to go there," Moyer said. "I don't have much control over it."

Washington state leans strongly Democratic in national politics, but there's only one county east of the Cascade Mountains that hasn't voted for Trump in the past three elections. Locals say they're puzzled by Trump's messaging to farmers, such as his invitation to "have fun" and "start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States."

"Even the people that are some of his strongest supporters were kind of looking at that and going, what does that truly mean?" said Byron Behne, a merchandiser with the Northwest Grain Growers in Walla Walla.

Washington and its neighboring states produce far more wheat than Americans could consume, and Behne said the industry would be forced to endure "a generation of pain," as NPR paraphrased him, by shutting off exports and imposing stiff tariffs on the imported materials farmers need.

"You can't just build a new factory to produce that stuff here," Behne said. " I mean, I understand that's the stated goal by the administration, but that stuff doesn't happen overnight."

Moyer, whose family has been farming the Palouse region since the 1890s, worries that many of his neighbors won't survive if the uncertainty from Trump's trade war drags on.

"Next year it's not going to be pretty," Moyer said. "Farming will be changed forever."