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Could trade tariffs throw an already struggling Rio Grande Valley agriculture industry into disarray? Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller doesn’t think so. And while some Valley farmers agree with the longtime cattle rancher and farmer’s assessment, others are being more cautious.

Not long after President Donald Trump was sworn into office last month, he signed three executive orders that would impose tariffs on three of the United States’ largest trading partners — Mexico, Canada and China.

The tariffs — 25% for most goods imported from Mexico and Canada, and 10% for those imported from China — were meant to go into effect Tuesday as part of Trump’s battle against the global illicit drug trade.

But on Monday, Trump backed off, issuing a 30-day reprieve on the tariffs against Mexico and Canada just as those countries had begun to rattle their sabers about imposing retaliatory tariffs on American exports.

For the Valley, international trade — especially that of produce and other farmed goods — is big business.

Some $43 billion in trade passed through the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge in 2024 alone, according to figures published as part of a World Cities Report on the bridge’s official website.

That includes more than $51 million in pork exports, and more than $452 million in fresh produce imports of everything from avocados, to tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, melons, broccoli and more.

But Trump’s tariff threats have had many wondering how their grocery bills would be impacted.

And for local farmers, the threat of tariffs is just one more stressor to account for in an industry that’s already plagued by numerous other woes, including water scarcity and the falling value in the commodities they grow.

But Miller, the ag commissioner, doesn’t think the threat will come to reality, and even if they do, they won’t have an outsized impact.

“I think it’ll be temporary. I never expected it to be implemented,” Miller told The Monitor on Tuesday.

Instead, Miller thinks that the president is using the threat of tariffs to force leaders from other countries to tackle the war on drugs.

And he may be right.

Shortly before the Mexico and Canada tariffs were set to go into effect, Mexico agreed to station 10,000 military troops along its border to help stave off smuggling.

“I predicted exactly what happened — that Mexico and Canada would both come to the negotiating table and the tariffs would never take effect,” Miller said.

“I have no reason to believe that we would ever implement the tariffs. We just need a little cooperation from our neighbors,” he added a moment later.

Brian Jones, the director for District 13 of the Texas Farm Bureau, largely agrees with Miller’s assessment.

“Sid and I both have the same opinion of what’s happening right now,” Jones said Friday.

A fourth generation farmer, Jones has spent nearly four decades planting cotton, corn, sorghum and soybeans — what are called “row crops” — in and around the Edcouch area. As a member of the Texas Farm Bureau, he represents other farmers and ranchers from the Valley, north to Laredo and the Coastal Bend.

He likened Trump’s use of the tariff threats to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“I believe that President Trump is walking like… FDR — ‘Carry a big stick and speak softly,’” Jones said.

“I think that’s kind of the same approach that he’s taking right now with all of these, and so far, it seems to be working,” Jones said.

But others are less certain.

Tudor Uhlhorn, another local farmer with a long family history in agriculture, worries that tariffs — whether real or threatened — will further damage an already stressed industry.

“Agricultural products are usually the first things that get hit in a big way when there is a trade war and tariffs. And that’s because they’re fungible,” Uhlhorn said, referring to the fact that agricultural products can be sourced from numerous countries.

“Tariffs are a bad idea,” he added a moment later.

Uhlhorn spoke of how a trade war in the 1970s led to farmers losing Japan as one of their most valuable buyers of American soybean crops.

That country circumvented the American embargo by sourcing soybeans from South America.

While most consumers may be worried over their future grocery bills going up due to rising import costs, Uhlhorn worries about American exports instead.

The Valley produces a lot of commodity crops — corn, grain sorghum, soybeans, cotton. And nearly all of that production is exported, Uhlhorn explained.

But just as national pundits talk tariffs, the value of those commodities has fallen sharply.

If farmers have to account for retaliatory tariffs on their exports, that could mean they will wind up paying more to produce their crops than they can reap in sales.

Currently, those commodities “are all at or below production costs,” Uhlhorn said, meaning that farmers can’t earn a profit or break even when they sell.

Additionally, as the Valley’s water scarcity problem persists, farmers are having to turn to growing the kinds of crops that use the least amount of water, known as dryland crops.

And they’re having to till fields they know that they will ultimately lose due to a lack of water. Doing so will at least allow farmers to salvage something through crop insurance and other financial relief.

“I mean, what can you do?” Uhlhorn asked.

“You’ve gotta plant a crop. So, when it’s planting time, that’s when you plant. And when it’s harvest time, that’s when you harvest. You can’t wait for the market to get better for either one of those things,” he said.

Uhlhorn is no stranger to loss.

Last year, as chair of the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers Association, Uhlhorn had the responsibility of announcing the end of that 51-year industry.

The Valley’s sugarcane industry came to an end due to an insufficient supply of water for irrigation.

Late last year, Uhlhorn officially retired from farming and now rents his lands to others willing to try their hand at it.

The career farmer doesn’t think the threat of tariffs will spell the end for other Valley crops the same way water did for sugarcane, but he does worry that it will be a factor in putting individual farmers out of business.

“I just think you’re going to stress and put a lot of farmers out of business if the price goes lower,” Uhlhorn said, reiterating that countries that currently buy American farm goods could find it a lot easier to get them from somewhere else.

“It sounds great to talk tough, but I don’t think it’s very good for U.S. consumers,” Uhlhorn said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, as the potential for tariffs remains uncertain, local lawmakers are already attempting to mitigate any impact they may have on the Valley.

Earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-McAllen, announced her efforts to exempt produce from the tariffs.

“It is my hope that we can discuss an exclusion of fruits and vegetables in the imposed tariffs on Mexico, if tariffs are eventually implemented,” De La Cruz wrote in a Feb. 5 letter addressed to the president.

The post Are tariffs ‘a bad idea?’: Texas ag commissioner, Valley farmers gauge impact appeared first on MyRGV.com.