Port: Trump is putting North Dakota's economic wellbeing at risk - InForum

MINOT — Exports are of enormous importance to North Dakota. According to U.S. Trade Office, our state exported roughly $9.5 billion worth of goods to international markets in 2024. That economic activity supported an estimated 46,000 jobs.

So it needn't be said that trade policy is vitally important to our state, and when our nation's chief executive wields that policy erratically and, according to the courts, illegally, it should matter to North Dakotans. Unfortunately, the reaction to Trump's tariffs from North Dakota leaders has largely been filtered through partisan loyalty.

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Trump had claimed that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 gave him the authority to impose tariffs on any country, at any level, at any time, for any reason. Often, his reasons were spurious.

He increased tariffs on Canada — North Dakota's largest trading partner — because he didn't like a television commercial airing in the country. He imposed stiffer tariffs on Switzerland because he didn't like the tone of that nation's president. After a phone call with President Karin Keller-Sutter, he raised tariffs because he didn't approve of “the way she talked.”

The powers granted to the president in the IEEPA are are to be used in emergencies. Our fragile president getting his feeling hurt by Canadian television, or the president of Switzerland, is not an emergency.

Trade policy impacts North Dakota's prosperity. It impacts North Dakota's jobs. To have these policies treated so cavalierly by the president — one a landslide of North Dakota voters for — is ridiculous.

Alas, we live in ridiculous times, as illustrated by our national reaction to President Trump accusing a majority of Supreme Court justices — including two he appointed himself — of being "swayed by foreign interests." At any other time in our nation's history, the president of the United States engaging in that sort of slanderous calumny would be a massive scandal. In the Trump era, it's just another day.

Trump and Republicans should be facing more distinct political consequences for these inane policies, but they're not, mostly because other factors are obscuring their impact. We've plowed billions our nation doesn't have — we ran a $1.9 trillion budget deficit last year — into bridge subsidies for farmers to offset the impacts of the trade wars Trump has ignited.

Meanwhile, national economic indicators have been inflated by a tech boom. Investments into AI technology and infrastructure accounted for as much as 40% of our national GDP growth for the first three quarters of 2025. The top six US cloud companies are projected to spend over $1.3 trillion on AI over the next two years. This has effectively propped up an economy that would otherwise be anemic amid trade pressures.

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For generations, traditionally conservative Republicans have argued for free trade, low taxes, and stable, predictable tax and regulatory regimes. Trump's policies have been the opposite of those things. North Dakota leaders like Sens. Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven know this, but they find themselves incapable of even modest criticism of the president because of the cult-like following he commands among the Republican base.

Republicans are living in a fantasy land where everything Trump does is correct, and anyone saying otherwise is a traitor, but reality is immutable. The bill for this will come due.