Journalist Elle Reeve of CNN traveled to South Dakota to interview supporters and opponents of President Donald Trump and find out what they think of his controversial tariff policy. The responses from people in the midwestern red state ranged from "let's give the president a chance" to "groceries are already outrageous."
"There was no way in hell I wanted her there," a voter, Jamie Basinger, said of former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. "But now I don't know what would have been better."
She said she was expecting the lower cost of a lot of essential items and hoping that Trump would "make things better for everybody in America."
Her expectations, however, were not met.
"Groceries are already outrageous, and then we put the tariffs on across the seas or whatever. Like China, all that. It just makes everything more expensive for everybody," she said, referring to the president's decision to impose a sweeping set of global tariffs on the United States' trading partners, many of which he later "paused."
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Another voter, Becky Hofer who is a Democrat with a conservative nonvoter husband, says everyone is nervous. "People are making different decisions for different reasons. But, you know, some of it is hesitation, some of it is actual price changes."
She said "everybody just wants some stability right now."
Asked if it is hard to talk about the administration's policies in a conservative pro-Trump area, she said, "The biggest thing that frustrates me is that I just feel like nobody cares right now until it affects them."
"And I don't understand how they don't see that. They're not dumb. These people aren't dumb, and they're not unkind people and selfish people and thoughtless people. So I don't understand why they're okay with it," she said of the president's supporters.
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Hofer's neighbor, Rod Olerud, who was feeding cattle at the time of the interview, is okay with the economic situation for now. "I just think we need to let the president do what he's doing, and we need to just see what's going to happen here and give him a little latitude so that you know, if it doesn't work, then we're going to have to try something different," he said, adding, "let's give the president a chance."
But Tommy Baruth, a retired soybean farmer who saw the consequences in 2018 when Trump put tariffs on China, said, "The export market just went down the tube because these countries could buy them from other places cheaper. Brazil and other countries were the ones that benefited from that."
"And a lot of times those markets don't come back," he added.
Doug Piercy, who runs a lawn mowing business, said Trump's plan will work out in the long term, even if some crop prices fall. "Yeah, the price might come down. But when then people start starving, they're going come back to the table," he said of the countries facing Trump's tariffs.
"We're a gracious, gracious nation feeding the world, and we shouldn't have to without getting something for it," he said, echoing Trump's sentiment on the issue.
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