"It hurts, I can't deny it." John Fleming, a fifth-generation farmer born in Halifax County in the heart of North Carolina, anxiously watched the numbers on his computer screen: The prices of cotton, soybeans and corn were plummeting. On Monday, April 7, the markets plunged again, five days after Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" with the announcement of massive tariffs. The 44-year-old farmer, with his red beard and coffee thermos in hand, will not plant cotton this year: The price of $0.649 per pound is below the break-even point. He now awaits the repercussions of the new tariffs: "I hope that it's gonna be a short-term pain, for a long-term gain." The wish has been echoed by MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republican lawmakers and ultraconservative Fox News editorialists in recent days: "It will be worth the pain."

In North Carolina, a swing state that Trump won by 185,000 votes in November 2024 and the fifth-largest US exporter to China, anxiety mingled with hope among farmers. Soybean, corn, wheat, peanut, tobacco and cotton fields cover a quarter of this eastern territory, interspersed with forests, Baptist churches and Victorian-style houses. Nearly 80% of agricultural counties in the United States voted for Trump, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Fleming hesitated to reveal that he voted for the MAGA champion, fearing activists might set his tractor on fire just as they damage Tesla cars, the company owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk.

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