RALEIGH – Last week, Roy Cooper hosted a roundtable with farmers in Wilson County, to discuss the devastating impacts of tariffs on North Carolina’s farmers. Farmers from across Eastern North Carolina discussed how tariffs have made every aspect of their business harder, from rising costs of supplies and machinery, to crushed margins, and billions of dollars in lost exports.
Wilson Times: Candidate Cooper vows support for farmers hurt by tariffs
Drew Wilson
- In a Friday visit to a Wilson County farm, former North Carolina governor and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper said farmers are the backbone of the state’s economy, and farms big and small are “truly hurting” from the impact of tariffs.
- “When I get to the Senate, I am going to put farmers at the forefront of what I do because when you look at North Carolina’s economy, agriculture ranks very high,” Cooper said.
- “With all the tariffs and everything that is going on in Washington, it is making it extremely hard for the small farmers just to support their own community with the fertilizer and the cost of diesel fuel and those things,” [Farmer Jeannette Martin] Horn said.
WCTI: Roy Cooper hears from Wilson County farmers on rising costs of fertilizer and equipment
Chris Young
- Former Governor Roy Cooper is making his rounds for his Senate campaign. On Friday, he spent the morning listening to questions and concerns from local farmers at Sharp Farms in Wilson County.
- “Governor Cooper is a person that understands the needs of the people of North Carolina,” [said Pender Sharp, President of Sharp Farms Inc.]. “He understands farming, grew up on a farm in Nash County, and we’ve got some serious challenges coming from the current administration and the tariffs they’re placing on our best customers all over the world and running our customers away.”
WITN: Farmers discuss tariff impacts with former Gov. Cooper
Elise Sandlin
- Farming is a livelihood for many in eastern North Carolina, but tariffs have imposed numerous threats on a business that’s dear to the hearts of so many.
- “It’s huge. It’s unimaginable the hardships that they’re creating,” Wilson County farmer Pender Sharp says. “We’ve lost markets that have taken 20 years to develop. We’re losing money.”
- “These tariffs don’t work,” Cooper says. “They’re being paid by consumers, businesses, and farmers here in the United States.”
- “The food bank is not having access to the food and choices that they’re used to because the funding has been cut, so they can’t get those vegetables out to the community,” Wilson County farmer Richard Joyner says.
WRAL: Cooper slams ‘erratic’ tariffs in Senate campaign stop at Wilson farm
Will Doran
- Tariffs are threatening farmers’ livelihood in North Carolina and its multibillion-dollar agriculture industry, former Gov. Roy Cooper said Friday, pitching himself as the U.S. Senate candidate who will go to Washington and fight to take back power over tariffs and more from the presidency.
- “Farmers today truly are hurting,” Cooper said Friday. “And many of them are hurting because of the chaotic and erratic tariffs driving up prices.”
- Some of the farmers with Cooper spoke about how tariffs were sending prices skyrocketing for their equipment and fertilizer. Others spoke about how the international trade wars that are springing up, as retaliation against the tariffs, have made it harder for them to sell the products they grow. There are fewer local customers, too, one of the farmers said, because Americans have less spending money now due to tariffs raising prices on many everyday products.
WITN: Gov. Cooper Hosts Roundtable Highlighting Disastrous Impacts of Tariffs on NC Farmers
- Sharp Farms President Pender Sharp: “It’s huge. It’s unimaginable the hardship that they’re creating. We’ve lost markets that took 20 years to develop. We’re losing money.”