Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig Calls for U.S. to Pursue New Markets Amid Trade War, Tariff Concerns

By Robin Opsahl

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said Wednesday the U.S. needs to explore new global markets amid ongoing trade wars, referencing the recent Iowa delegation trip to India as an area where Iowa farmers could see expanded business.

Naig spoke on the issue at a news conference held at Maxwell Custom Beef in Des Moines, where he announced the recipients of nine Choose Iowa Butchery Innovation Grants Wednesday. The Choose Iowa grants, totaling $355,000, provide funding for equipment upgrades and facility improvements for small-scale meat processing plants across the state.

As harvest season approaches, the agriculture secretary acknowledged that “certainly, prices are not where we would like them to be,” especially for soybeans. He said another factor causing farmers to struggle is high input prices — referring to growing costs for land, farm equipment, seeds, and fuel.

“So what we need to be thinking about then is, how can we drive down the cost of inputs, but how can we also expand and unleash the market opportunities?” Naig said. “… So my message to our farm community — and certainly I’ve been hearing from them about their concerns and the challenges — is that we need to continue to work on both the input side, driving down those prices. But also — how do we how do we increase demand for the things that we produce in this state so well?”

Some have pointed to President Donald Trump’s trade policies as a concern for farmers. For soy farmers, U.S.-China trade relations are particularly in question. Currently, China is not buying U.S. soybeans, a retaliatory measure to tariffs imposed by Trump. While typically more than half of soybeans grown in the U.S. are sold to China, Chinese importers have booked a vast majority of soybean shipments to come from South America in October 2025, Reuters reports.

Though there are significant concerns about the impact of this trade shift, Naig said the U.S. needs to aggressively seek new foreign trade partners.

“Just remember: This is a global marketplace,” Naig said.

If China is importing more from Brazil and other South American countries, Naig said, that means “there are other markets that are available for us to be selling to and that’s where you’ve got to go be very aggressive in pursuing those additional markets.

“And it takes many to add up to what China formerly was, to be sure, but I think there’s opportunities across the board for for soybean and soybean meal — India, again, being an example of where we think soybean meal could be a real opportunity,” he said.

Naig, alongside Gov. Kim Reynolds and other Iowa state and business leaders, returned this week from an eight-day trade mission to India. The trip involved trade discussions that began when an Iowa delegation first went to India in 2024, and involved roundtable events with the U.S. Soybean Export Council and the U.S. Grains Council.

However, Naig said he still believed there would be successful negotiations between the U.S. and China that will result in soybean exports.

“(China) can’t entirely rely on South America, and so we need to get to reality here,” Naig said. “And obviously that’s a very complex relationship. Soybeans just one of those pieces, but I am hopeful that we will, in fact, see some movement in that.”

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