What’s Working: Trump’s tariff roller coaster is no fun for Colorado’s farm and agriculture industry
Plus: Colorado’s top imports and exports that face tariffs, consumer-protection week tips, moon landing goes sideways, and more!
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Business/Technology Reporter
Quick links: Colorado’s to 10 imports from Canada, Mexico and China | Threat to exports | Consumer protection tips | Reader poll results | Lunar mission failure
At the start of the week, small businesses reluctantly faced new 25% tariffs that kicked in Tuesday morning on anything imported from Canada and Mexico.
A day later, the Trump administration suspended tariffs for automakers abiding by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. A day after that, the president paused most of the other new tariffs until April 2, at least on items that also meet USMCA. The administration also lowered tariffs to 10% on energy products and potash for the agriculture industry even if they aren’t qualified under USMCA.
Helpful? Not really, said Brian Kuehl, executive director of Farmers for Free Trade, which sponsored a tariff discussion at the World Trade Center Denver this week.
“The uncertainty is very harmful. It’s hard for businesses to plan when they don’t know, day to day, what the tariff rates will be,” Kuehl said Thursday. “Also challenging is the fact that many goods that could qualify under USMCA haven’t had to claim USMCA coverage because they had no tariffs or low tariffs outside of USMCA. I’m sure shippers of those goods are scrambling to set up compliance processes to ship their goods under USMCA. That in itself is disruptive and an added cost.”
Small businesses statewide scrambled this week to make sense of the impact though with tariff orders changing almost daily, it was difficult to do that. In Colorado, the 25% tariffs for Canada and Mexico plus the newer 20% for Chinese imports would add $1.4 billion to Colorado importers a year, according to a report by economic research firm Trade Partnership Worldwide. The three countries make up nearly half of Colorado’s $17 billion import market.
“As long as the tariff threat remains over the heads of businesses, it’s going to be an almost impossible situation to manage,” said Jeremy Petersen, founder and president of Identity Pet Nutrition in Windsor. “Businesses need certainty and now this fight is transforming not just from a fight against tariffs but a fight for certainty.”
Identity Pet Nutrition makes human-grade wet pet food in Canada, which was chosen because of the higher quality pet food manufacturing. But a monthlong pause won’t help since like many companies, orders are made several months in advance. This makes it seem even more like a “political game,” he added because “it’s not like we can get on the production schedule tomorrow.”
Denver economist Ryan Gedney broke down the top 10 imports to Colorado from Canada, Mexico and China.
A big chunk of Canadian imports to Colorado is oil and gas, he noted. At $3.3 billion, oil and gas accounts “for a staggering 62% of import value into Colorado from Canada last year and nearly one-fifth of all imports for the state,” Gedney said in his analysis.
The threat to Colorado’s growing export market
But of great concern, especially among Colorado farmers and the agriculture industry, are retaliatory tariffs.
The state exported a record of $10.5 billion in goods last year, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. That’s up from $8.3 billion in 2018.
In 2022, 5,722 Colorado companies sent items out of the U.S. and largely to Mexico and Canada. The top manufactured export was “food and kindred products.” Exports also contributed 2% to the state’s gross domestic product.
Tariffs could encourage foreign buyers to look elsewhere for the products they are currently buying from Colorado. And that’s not easy to recover from, said Nick Colglazier, executive director of the Colorado Corn Council. Corn got slapped with a 15% tax in China.
“That hurts us by raising those prices and making us less competitive in those foreign markets,” Colglazier said. “Somebody else can come in and take those. That means we lose that market share. Can we find another market? Possibly, but that takes time, just like rebuilding your infrastructure in the United States.”
The U.S. Grains Council opened its first office in China in 1980 and it took them almost 40 years to get grain flowing into China, Colglazier said. “It takes so long to build those relationships, build that trust and get the policy right inside those countries.”
Canada had matched Trump’s 25% tariffs Tuesday but limited the tax to $30 billion Canadian (US $21 billion). A second round of Canadian tariffs on U.S. goods was paused until April 2 in response to Trump’s change of mind.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, meanwhile, planned to announce retaliatory tariff details Sunday. After meeting with Trump on Thursday and getting him to pause tariffs for a month, she said the Sunday event was still scheduled but as “a festival” with “musical groups,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
China said it’ll add another 10%-15% retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agriculture exports, starting Monday, March 10, after the Trump administration levied 10% tariffs on China last month and another 10% on Tuesday.
That increases the tax on beef and pork exported to China by 10%. But added to existing Chinese tariffs, the total export tax will be 22% for beef and 47% for pork for U.S. farmers and ranchers, said Joe Schuele, a spokesperson for the U.S. Meat Export Federation, which is based in Denver.
Schuele said China has an existing 12% standard tariff on meat and there’s still a 25% retaliatory tariff on pork from Trump’s 2018 tariffs to discourage the Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property.
International buyers have helped ranchers get more value for their cattle by buying the “underulitized” products like tongues, tails, hearts and livers. That’s helped get the export value of beef to $415 per head. Pork adds $66 per animal in export sales, according to Meat Export Federation data.
“There’s certainly a concern we could lose customers or the price that foreign buyers are able to pay would simply not be as good because they’re going to have to absorb the cost of a tariff or try to pass it along with customers,” Schuele said. “A lot of these markets are price sensitive. Our red meat exports are booming to Latin America but those are price-sensitive markets and not high income.”
More federal changes in Colorado
➔ DOGE firings rattle Colorado ferret program as populations are on the mend >> Read story
➔ U.S. Small Business Administration is moving out of Denver because it’s a “sanctuary city” >> Read story
➔ Hundreds gather in front of NOAA campus in Boulder to protest recent federal firings >> Read story
Tips to help make consumer protection year-round
National Consumer Protection Week ends today but anyone trying to create cyber mayhem doesn’t care about calendars.
And if the trends showing up on the Colorado attorney general’s consumer-complaint inbox are widespread, Coloradans shouldn’t take a break anytime soon. Impostor scams landed at fourth on the AG’s top-10 list and were the third-fastest-growing complaint.
On Tuesday, the AG’s office shared a blackmail scam in the form of an email that threatens to reveal something embarrassing about the recipient unless they pay money. No evidence is shared but do usually contain at least one piece of familiar personal information, such as a name, phone number or photo of the recipient’s home. It’s just a new form of phishing to catch folks off guard and nab some financial benefit. (SAMPLE)
“If you receive a scam like this, do not pay,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said. “Alarming as these communications may be, throw away the letter or delete the email and report it to us at StopFraudColorado.gov.”
Older business and credit card data breaches exposing customer details are often blamed for a plethora of stolen personal data for sale. But a shockingly detailed amount of data is publicly available online at sites like FastPeopleSearch (here’s NordVPN’s steps to remove data from FastPeopleSearch) and Whitepages.com (removal instructions).
Combine this with new tech and artificial intelligence tools, it’s becoming easier for anyone to make sense of stolen data and match it to digital details like public photos on Google Map Street View (here’s how to ask Google to blur the image of your home).
You don’t have to live in fear though. Just keep in mind that personal data is easy to find, which makes it easier to trick unsuspecting consumers, said Danny Katz, executive director of CoPIRG, a consumer watchdog organization in Colorado.
“In the last 15 years, more bad actors have gotten access to more of your personal information and that’s a bigger threat,” Katz said. “And the tools they use to scam you have gotten more sophisticated, in particular with deep fakes, where they can actually get recordings of voices and use other sorts of pieces of personal information to make you think you’re talking to somebody you know, even a loved one, to get you to open up.”
CoPIRG is all in for Consumer Protection Week and share tools to take advantage of to protect one’s privacy:
➔ More CoPIRG consumer protection tips, including lowering medical bills, airline travel and shopping for credit >> MORE
➔ Problems with insurance claims? Ask DORA for help. Inside the state’s Department of Regulatory Affairs, the Division of Insurance nudges insurance companies to settle consumer claims. Last year, it helped consumers recover $26.5 million, up from $21.5 million in 2023. It investigates consumer complaints related to denials, improper amounts and delayed payments. In one case, a consumer expecting a $2 million payout on two life insurance policies waited for three months before filing a complaint. The agency got the case settled in two weeks, “including over $14,000 in interest,” according to its annual complaint report. >> File a complaint
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Will Colorado Springs’ growth come at the cost of livelihoods on the Eastern Plains? Farmers say yes. >> Read story
➔ Arapahoe Basin to offer unlimited skiing with the Ikon Pass. Next season, pass holders will get unlimited access to Arapahoe Basin >> Read story
➔ Grand County ranchers will receive almost $350,000 in compensation for animals lost to wolves last year. “It is trying to recover some costs that have been lost and should have been paid to these producers last fall,” says Colorado Wildlife Commission chair >> Read story
➔ Colorado School of Mines project hopes to warm houses, lower bills in mobile home communities. The goal is to bring energy efficiency to low-income families and communities. >> Read story
➔ Supporters of Colorado tipped minimum wage bill say their businesses are being “harassed” with angry calls, hostile reviews. Some restaurant owners signed up to speak out at the Capitol in support of the bill now have second thoughts >> Read story
➔ Home improvements help people age independently. But Medicare seldom picks up the bill. >> Read story
We answer to you — not a billionaire The Colorado Sun, independent local news worth supporting!
Reader poll results: Favorite national park?
Thanks to the 105 people who took last week’s poll. Tracy Ross, who writes about Colorado’s rural economy, got a lot of great feedback.
And I’m posting the response to the question that drew folks in: What’s your favorite national park? As some readers noted, the options only included one national park, the rest were state parks. But there was also the write-in vote, which did surprisingly well, especially Black Canyon of the Gunnison with seven votes.
The intent wasn’t to trick but to encourage interaction. We appreciate the feedback!
Take the next poll
It’s Denver Restaurant Week and the fun of scouring through menus has begun.
But it’s difficult to avoid reports of the struggling restaurant industry, especially as many restaurant owners have backed a proposed bill that could lower base pay for tipped workers. Has that affected your plans to dine out? Help us understand what Coloradans care about by taking our reader poll.
Other working bits
➔ Colorado lunar rover lands on the moon but can’t move. Seven days after leaving Earth, Lunar Voyage 1 MAPP from Lunar Outpost in Golden made it to the moon’s South Pole. But the Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander it traveled in ended up sideways, preventing MAPP from deploying. “Our data paints a clear picture that MAPP survived the landing attempt and would have driven on the lunar surface and achieved our mission objectives had it been given the opportunity,” the company said on X. >> The update
➔ Microchip Technology plans 238 job cuts in Colorado Springs. A soft semiconductor market is blamed for downsizing companywide at Arizona-based Microchip Technology, which manufactures chip-related products. The company notified the state labor department this week that it was laying off 238 workers at its Colorado Springs plant, which last year was awarded $90 million in federal incentives to expand as part of the CHIPS and Science Act to lure tech companies back to the U.S. The company has paused the CHIP grant, according to its business update.
➔ Deadline for Colorado property tax credit for seniors. Homeowners who lost their Senior Property Tax Exemption because they moved between 2020 and 2025 can apply at the Division of Property Taxation but must do so by March 15. It provides a tax exemption of 50% of the first $200,000 in actual value for qualified applicants when the state’s budget allows. >> Details
Got some economic news or business bits Coloradans should know? Tell us: cosun.co/heyww
Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara
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