Trade Wars and Promises of Deportation Could Have Far Reaching Effects on Wisconsin's Farms and Manufacturers

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024 -- 12:00 PM

(Rick Barrett, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) A return of Donald Trump to the White House may present a conundrum for Wisconsin dairy farmers and manufacturers.

According to Rick Barrett with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, many support the Republican nominee's pro-business agenda and pledge to seal the U.S. southern border, but there could be harsh consequences if Trump launched trade wars and ordered mass deportations.

Immigration is high on the list of concerns. It’s an issue employers in America's Dairyland want addressed in a sensible, non-threatening way as they've filled a large number of job vacancies with undocumented immigrant workers, often in rural areas where the local labor force has been shrinking for decades.

“We need functioning guest-worker visa programs. We need an immigration policy that solves problems,” said Kurt Bauer, president of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business organization. “The policy we have now is causing problems,” he added.

Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the largest such effort in U.S. history. He also would reinstate his “remain in Mexico” program that forces non-Mexican asylum seekers trying to enter the U.S. at the southern border to wait in Mexico for their cases to be resolved.

The threat of mass deportations rattles Wisconsin's dairy industry. By some estimates, immigrants provide around 80% of the labor on large dairy operations, and many of those workers are in the U.S. illegally. Without them, some farms milking cows day and night, 365 days a year, would likely shut down.

"The industry wouldn't exist without immigrants," said John Rosenow, a Buffalo County dairy farmer who has spent years urging the federal government, under Democrat and Republican administrations, to create a legal pathway for dairy farms to hire help from outside the United States.

"It's just so toxic, nobody will touch it," Rosenow said. "But if the politicians and people in power don't make any sense, we do it our own way," he added. Even midsize and smaller dairy farms have come to rely upon immigrant employees.

“We would not be America’s Dairyland without them,” said Tina Hinchley, a dairy farmer from Cambridge and vice president of Wisconsin Farmers Union, a member-run organization that represents farmers' interests.

However, for milking cows 365 days a year, dairy farms cannnot access the H-2A farmworker program which grants visas for seasonal immigrant employees but not those seeking year-round positions.

“Farmers urgently need access to a stable, legal workforce,” says the National Milk Producers Federation, one of the industry’s largest trade groups. “Dairy farmers cannot afford to lose their current workers without massive disruption to their farms and to rural economies. Employees who have been working on dairy farms for years should be able to continue working and earn permanent legal status, as should their immediate families,” it says.

Consumers would feel the disruption as around 79% of the U.S. milk supply comes from dairies that employ immigrant labor, according to the National Milk Producers Federation.

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