The Green Colossus Staggers - How Trump's Tariff War Shatters John Deere and the Farmers

Imagine you are Josh and Dewey Enlow. Every morning you stand on your auction lot in Oklahoma, surrounded by a sea of green giants - John Deere tractors as far as the eye can see. In the past, this was where bargain hunters came, the small farmers who wanted to buy a used tractor. Today? Today, the trucks of the large-scale farmers park in front of your door, men who used to buy only brand-new machines. They comb through your stock like archaeologists looking for affordable alternatives. The reason is brutally simple: Prices for new John Deere machines have exploded by at least 60 percent since 2017, some models cost a quarter of a million dollars more than eight years ago. That is no longer a price increase, that is economic madness.

The numbers our independent research uncovered read like an economic thriller: John Deere, this 187-year-old giant with over 30,000 U.S. employees and 60 American factories, reported a 29 percent drop in profits. For 2025, the company is calculating with more than 600 million dollars in additional costs - solely because of Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum. 238 workers in Illinois and Iowa have already received their termination notices, more than 2,000 jobs have been cut since 2024. The warehouses are overflowing with unsold machines, while out in the fields the old tractors are wheezing and smoking because nobody can afford new ones. What is happening on America's fields is a tragedy in real time. Corn prices have fallen by 50 percent since 2022, soybeans down 40 percent. The U.S. Department of Agriculture - not a left-wing think tank, but Trump's own agency - calculates: 3.4 billion dollars in losses from soybeans alone this year. The letter from Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, to Trump, which we have, dated August 19, 2025, reads like a distress call: "The U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice." China buys 61 percent of the world's soybean harvest, but no longer from America. Why? Because U.S. soybeans are subject to 20 percent higher tariffs than soybeans from South America. Ragland writes in desperation: "U.S. soybeans are currently subject to a 20% higher tariff than soybeans from South America - due to Chinese retaliatory tariffs." The Brazilians have massively expanded their production since the last trade war - while America is strangling itself.

Economists at the Cato Institute have coined a term that perfectly describes the situation: "pen-stroke risk" - the risk that a single stroke of the pen in Washington wipes out your entire life plan. A farmer in Iowa has taken out a million-dollar loan for a new combine harvester, calculated with soybean prices of 12 dollars per bushel. Then Trump imposes new tariffs, China responds with retaliatory tariffs, and suddenly the price is 8 dollars. The calculation? Wastepaper. The loan? Impossible to service. The farm? Gone. Farmers in the key agricultural states voted for Trump by an overwhelming majority. They believed him when he said he would bring China to its knees. Now they are kneeling themselves - in front of their bank advisers, in front of the collection agencies, in front of nothingness. Ragland formulates it diplomatically but firmly in his letter: "Mr. President, you have strongly supported farmers, and farmers have strongly supported you. We need your help."

Analyst Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer is trying to spread hope, talking about a possible recovery in 2026 through new tax advantages. But 2026 is for many farmers like the promise of water in the desert - you die of thirst before you get there. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, this temple of agricultural trade, now resembles an intensive care unit. The futures prices for wheat, corn, and soybeans move like the EKG curves of a patient in intensive care - a twitch upward, then free fall again.

The real explosion hits us all. AGCO, the parent company of Fendt and Massey Ferguson, depends on European components for 35 percent of its U.S. sales. Every gearbox from Bavaria, every hydraulic part from the Ruhr region becomes a loss-making business because of the tariffs. The company is already considering relocating production - away from Europe, to other locations. That means: German jobs are at risk because an American president thinks trade wars are "good and easy to win."

The German collateral damage - when the shock wave washes across the Atlantic

Our analyses show the extent: The Bundesbank warns of a 1.5 percentage point lower GDP growth by 2027. That is about 60 billion euros that will be missing. Money for infrastructure, education, healthcare - evaporated in a trade war. The ifo Institute has calculated the federal states: Saarland with its steel industry, Lower Saxony with its automobile industry, Baden-Württemberg with its premium manufacturers - all massively affected. These regions depend on U.S. exports like a patient on a drip. Germany achieved a trade surplus of 65 billion euros with the U.S. in 2024. For Trump, that is a red rag. He only sees the number, not the interconnection behind it. Every BMW that rolls off the assembly line in Spartanburg contains parts from German factories. Every Siemens turbine in Texas was developed in Germany. Every John Deere tractor uses components from German suppliers such as Schaeffler or Bosch. This is not a one-way street, this is a highly complex cycle of global value creation. The port cities Hamburg and Bremen are already feeling the distortions. The IMK institute calculates: With 30 percent tariffs, Germany loses 0.25 percentage points of economic growth in 2025 and 2026 each year. In euros: about 10 billion per year. These are real losses - investments not made, jobs not created, innovations that fail to materialize.

The at least 600 million dollars that John Deere must spend on tariffs in 2025 alone are just the tip of the iceberg. Below lies an entire ecosystem: suppliers lose orders, freight companies have to reduce capacities, banks are sitting on loans that can no longer be serviced. It is a chain reaction of destruction. John Deere itself formulates it soberly in its quarterly reports: The tariffs are a "significant burden" on operating business. Behind this formulation are human destinies - the 238 people laid off in Illinois and Iowa, the dealers with full warehouses, the farmers who can no longer finance their investments.

Trump had promised to save American industry. Instead, he is dismantling it piece by piece. The farmers, his most loyal voters, are standing among the ruins of their existence. Ragland's letter ends with a desperate appeal: "Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress." He adds that the farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade conflict with their largest customer - China. John Deere, since 1837 a symbol of American engineering, is becoming a warning sign of failed policy. And in Germany? They are paying too - for a war no one can win. The green tractors on the Enlows' auction lots in Oklahoma are silent witnesses to this turning point - memorials of an era in which economic reason was sacrificed to political populism.

The next time you see a John Deere tractor, remember: This is not just a machine. This is a symbol of the fragility of global supply chains, a green-painted proof of what happens when politics ignores the economy. From Iowa to Ingolstadt, from Beijing to Berlin - we all pay the price for this folly.