Capitol Building in Washington D.C. | Doganmesut, via Adobe Stock
I originally wrote this on the eve of the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. Eight years ago at this time, I, and I’m guessing many of you reading this, felt a sense of uncertainty over where the next four years would lead.
Fast forward to today, and that sense of uncertainty may be even more pronounced. There were a lot of promises made by President Trump on the campaign trail, and while not all campaign promises come to fruition (for good or for bad), there’s no doubt we are on the cusp of significant change.
With the assumption that Trump will attempt to move forward on these campaign promises, here’s a brief breakdown of how you can plan for proposed actions by this administration that might affect your business and your team.
Let’s start with how you source labor. If you rely on foreign labor (whether through the H-2A program or otherwise), you may already be planning for what to do amid the possibility of mass deportations. While Trump has said that violent criminals will be his first target, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) notes that one of the tools the Trump administration may use is an expansion of the “expedited removal” program, combined with raids in neighborhoods and workplaces. “Using expedited removal, an immigration officer may quickly deport individuals without due process if the government establishes that they entered the U.S. without immigration documents and have been in the country for less than two years. People deported under expedited removal may be detained and deported without appearing before an immigration judge.”
The NIJC has posted a list of five things you can do now to protect yourself and your team, which you can find at https://is.gd/NrsEux.
There’s also the funding and staffing of government programs. Elon Musk, through the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, has vowed to make significant reductions in spending. Even if federal programs don’t go away, timelines for anything from crop insurance to disaster relief to the registration of crop protection materials could lag.
Finally, there’s the series of tax cuts passed during the first Trump administration. Current plans are for these policies to extend beyond their expiration in a few months.
However, these tax cuts will mean less income coming into the federal government. Hence, some lawmakers are looking for ways to boost revenue shortfalls in different ways. According to Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA) President/CEO Daren Coppock (as reported by the editorial team at Crop Life, a Meister Media Worldwide publication), one of the proposals being suggested is to tax nonprofit trade associations.
“There’s some talk in Washington about how to pay for these — how do you make up the money to pay for these tax cuts?” Coppock asked during the ARA’s annual meeting and conference in early December. “One of the provisions they are talking about would make trade associations revenue — dues, income, sponsorships, show revenue — taxable. That would be devastating to this organization. So, there are a bunch of nonprofit organizations like us that are trying to stop this to make sure it doesn’t get out of whatever committee it is in right now.”
On the topic of tariffs, Coppock reminded ARA members that they need to engage with representatives of the incoming administration to make certain everyone understands how important trading partners are to the fortunes of U.S. ag producers.
“These relationships take decades to build and take minutes to destroy,” he says. “I am concerned about what proposed trade tariff policies might do. We have to be really active so the incoming administration understands what the likely impact of these policies will be.”
There’s one common theme and take-home message with all the points above: communication with your team. Remember that just as you and your business are affected by change, they will be too, regardless of — or perhaps especially due to — age, race, or gender. The protection of your company and your employees will go a long way in navigating any uncertainty.
