“We’ve got 71 days [until the midterm elections], and right now we don’t have a positive message to sell farm country,” Tillis said in remarks shared by Semafor’s Burgess Everett, tracing the trouble back to Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout in April 2025.
“That’s exactly why I asked whose throat I got to choke if Liberation Day failed last year, and it failed,” he said. Nearly 17 months later, Tillis now has his answer: “That person is Howard Lutnick.”
What went wrong?
Lutnick has been one of the central figures behind Trump’s tariff push. As commerce secretary, he has helped negotiate trade deals and repeatedly argued that tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the U.S. and give Washington leverage in trade negotiations.
According to The New York Times, this included making “last-minute demands” that derailed U.S.-Canada trade negotiations last week, prompting Canada to impose retaliatory tariffs on roughly $20 billion of U.S. goods, including dairy, seafood and outdoor equipment.
With the Nov. 3 midterms approaching, Tillis’ warning underscores the challenge Republicans face in making their economic case to agricultural voters amid rising energy prices, an uneven labor market and higher borrowing costs as surging bond yields push up interest rates across the economy.
For Tillis, those voters are close to home.
North Carolina is home to roughly 41,300 farms spread across 8 million acres, according to USDA data. The state is an agricultural heavyweight, particularly in livestock and poultry, with about 7.9 million hogs as of December 2025 and nearly 985 million broiler chickens produced during the year.
Tillis’ criticism therefore carries more weight than a routine intraparty swipe at Trump’s trade team. Tariffs can squeeze farmers in his home state from both directions, raising the cost of imported supplies while leaving U.S. agricultural exports vulnerable to retaliation.
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Trump’s cheaper beef push has ranchers on edge
As Canada ratchets up its tariff response, the U.S. farm industry is facing another trade-policy dilemma: Trump is temporarily lowering barriers to foreign beef to bring down grocery prices. The push comes as the administration faces broader pressure over food prices, with higher energy costs stemming from the Iran war adding to expenses across the agricultural supply chain.
