The Trump Tax: How Tariffs Could Gut Black Communities in the South
From rural farmers to retirees, the President's sweeping new tariffs are storming a wave of economic uncertainty — one that Southern Black communities are the least equipped to weather.
At first glance, tariffs sound like a far-off financial policy. Watching it play out on TV screens, the idea seems dense and distant. But walk into a small town grocery store in Savannah, Georgia, ride past the only Black farm in Montgomery County in Jackson Springs, North Carolina, or even visit family in the Mississippi Delta, and you just may find the effects already beginning to settle in.
For Black Southerners, where the cost of living already outpaces wages and inflation has hit household staples the hardest, this is more than a pinch. It’s a blow.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs. The plan, effective April 5, slaps a 10% baseline tax on all imported goods and steep country-specific hikes — such as 54% on Chinese imports and 49% on goods from Cambodia. Dubbed “Liberation Day,” the rollout was framed as a patriotic rebuke to globalization. But beneath the bravado, these policies carry a familiar weight — one that lands disproportionately on working-class families across the Black South.
Trump claims these measures will make imported goods more expensive to boost domestic production and protect American jobs. However, economists like Alan Wolff have made it clear that tariffs will be passed down to consumers. The Peterson Institute for International Economics warns that the new policy could cost American households an average of $2,000 more annually.
And for many Southern Black communities—especially those living paycheck to paycheck—these tariffs look less like financial freedom and more like financial warfare.
“This amounts to the largest tax increase on families in American history,” Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) said on Twitter, whose state relies heavily on imports, for everything from car parts to farming equipment.
Southern States Hit the Hardest
The pain of these tariffs won’t be distributed evenly. States like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida — all with significant Black populations and deep ties to global trade — will be on the frontline of the impacts.
Mississippi, which has the highest Black poverty rate in the nation, is especially vulnerable as families already struggle to afford groceries and fuel.
Georgia, with its busy Savannah port, will feel disruptions in logistics and warehousing — industries with high Black employment.
Alabama, a manufacturing hub, faces the threat of retaliatory tariffs from other nations on cars and machinery.
North Carolina is already seeing a rise in farm bankruptcies. If those farms are already struggling, what does that mean for Black farmers, who face far more systemic barriers?
Florida's large retiree population may see their fixed incomes stretched even further by inflation and market drops.
Farmers, Ports, and Price Shocks
In eastern North Carolina, a white farm owner recently told reporters she was “one point away from bankruptcy.” That reality, if dire for her, could be even worse for Black farmers who already face systemic barriers to credit, land retention, and federal aid. Their struggles often go undocumented until the land is lost for good.
While much of the media attention has focused on foreign relations, Southern lawmakers are focused on kitchen table economics. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) warned that the tariffs will “skyrocket the cost of everyday items like cars and food.”
Black workers dominate many of the sectors most sensitive to these changes: trucking, port labor, manufacturing, and food service. Ports in Savannah, Charleston, and Mobile act as economic lifelines for the region. As global goods slow, jobs could vanish. “It doesn’t just hurt the consumer — it hurts the economy of the entire district,” said Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA), whose district includes parts of New Orleans.
Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), though rarely aligned with Democrats, co-sponsored a bill to block tariffs on Canada, calling the move “a tax on American families.” It passed the Senate 51-48 this past Wednesday.
Retirement, Recession Fears, and a Southern Rebellion
The economic anxiety stirred by Trump’s tariffs isn’t limited to working-class families and farmers — it’s also rattling the retirement base across the South. In Florida, home to one of the country’s largest populations of retirees, concerns are growing.
When Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy pressed the White House about retirees losing money, Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted: “They are legitimate concerns.”
That same day, when asked about the tariffs' impacts on the stock markets, Trump told reporters on his way to Florida, “I think it’s going very well. It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on.”
For many Black elders in the South, whose retirement is built not on generational wealth but modest pensions and Social Security, even small price hikes on goods can pose serious challenges.
Against this backdrop, Southern lawmakers — many of them Black — are voicing sharp opposition to what they see as an economic betrayal. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock warned that “these tariffs achieve nothing,” a sentiment echoed across district lines. Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett called the move “playing with fire,” while Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana labeled it “a betrayal,” warning that his district would be among the hardest hit.
Former Florida Congresswoman Val Demings didn’t mince words: “This is not about national security. It’s about waging an economic war on the middle class.” And Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi summed it up with precision: “This is a ‘shoot-then-aim’ tariff scheme.”
Tariffed by Design, Burdened by Default
For the Black South, economic vulnerability isn’t new — but these tariffs only threaten to deepen the wounds. From inflated grocery bills to uncertain retirement futures, the effects will ripple across our communities without the cushion of wealth, federal support, or local policy protections.
And while today’s tariff hike may wear a new face, it echoes a deeper historical pattern. In 1861, Congress passed the Morrill Tariff — an aggressive protectionist policy that raised import taxes just before the Civil War. Though framed as an economic strategy, it disproportionately hurt Southern economies, many of them reliant on agriculture and trade. Black laborers — then enslaved and later exploited through sharecropping — felt that pain first.
The legacy of using tariffs that burden the South still lingers.
This isn't just about economic theory or partisan talking points—it’s people’s lives. While Trump calls these tariffs a move toward “economic independence,” I promise you, Black Southerners are hearing — and feeling — something far more different, but strange enough, familiar too.
13 & South is a new publication covering news, investigative stories, and insights on social justice, policy, and systemic inequities impacting Southern Black communities. I value your insights, and feedback and invite your perspectives to contribute to future issues. Please feel free to contact me here or follow me on my socials! LinkedIn, Twitter, IG, BlueSky, and Threads.
I believe this is the plan. To decimate and annihilate the poor people, white and black. They will take their land for nothing, forcing them to work for lower than sustainable wages and prevent them from living a life that we are all entitled to.
It is the plan!