In Utah, the debate over trade and tariffs isn’t abstract. It’s about farmland, water, and livelihoods. Beginning in the 2010s, Chinese companies purchased thousands of acres of Utah farmland to grow alfalfa — not for our cattle, but to ship overseas to feed China’s dairy industry. Utah exports 5% of its hay to Asia each year, using water that could sustain local agriculture. Some of this land was even near military bases.

By 2024, the Legislature had had enough. Lawmakers passed HB516, banning adversarial foreign entities from buying land and requiring divestment of more than 35,000 acres already under Chinese control. This summer, the governor blocked a sale of land near Provo Airport to a Chinese-linked aviation company. Utahns recognized what was at stake: when foreign entities control our agricultural base, it is not only an economic issue but a national security risk.

Meanwhile, Utah ranchers have been buffeted by global trade fights. A 2017 U.S.–China beef deal gave local producers a new market, but by 2018 retaliatory tariffs wiped out gains almost overnight. Ranch families who invested in export capacity suddenly faced deep losses. The lesson is clear for Utah farmers, ranchers, and business owners: the back-and-forth of global trade policy is not a distant argument in Washington. It’s the difference between stability and uncertainty at home.

Constitutional stakes

That’s why the current fight over presidential authority on tariffs matters in Utah as much as anywhere. Courts are weighing whether to block the president’s latest tariff actions. They shouldn’t.

The Constitution divides trade power. Congress regulates commerce with foreign nations and collects duties, while the president negotiates treaties and represents U.S. interests abroad. From the start, those roles overlapped: Congress sets the framework, presidents carry out the deals.

Since 1934, Congress has delegated tariff power to presidents of both parties, consistently upheld by the courts. Tariffs are not new overreach but bipartisan tradition.

National security stakes

History teaches a simple lesson: nations that lose the ability to provide essential goods lose independence. Empires that relied on others for food, steel, or energy — or that bankrupted themselves in costly wars — collapsed under their own dependencies.

When I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010, I witnessed these consequences up close. Free trade and foreign dumping cost Utah its steel industry, blocked oil leases devastated rural counties and transport jobs, and coal mine closures left broken towns and lost livelihoods.

Those essential industries — food, oil, and steel — were compromised as other countries engaged in unfair trade while placing high tariffs on us. The result wasn’t just lost industries; it was weakened sovereignty. These were not abstract shifts — they were real families and towns losing their livelihoods. It is about getting back to balance: restoring survival industries so America can stand on its own feet again.

This is why tariffs today are not just economic levers but national security necessities. In 2009, U.S. federal debt was about $12 trillion. Today it is over $35 trillion — nearly triple in just 15 years. At the same time, NAFTA and WTO globalization shifted production abroad, leaving America with a service-heavy economy and a weakened industrial base.

Debt and dependence form a dangerous pair. A nation that cannot produce its own food, fuel, and steel is not sovereign. It is strategically vulnerable.

Stay the course

As Utah’s first Republican woman to run for the U.S. Senate and a 2016 presidential elector, I made trade policy a top priority. I argued then that NAFTA and GATT had sold off America’s manufacturing base, and that reversing course was essential to restoring sovereignty. That conviction has only deepened.

But tariffs and course corrections cannot happen overnight. Paying off debt is painful and slow. Rebuilding sovereignty is the same: short-term sacrifice for long-term stability. Abandoning halfway guarantees deeper dependence. We must stay the course.

What Utah — and the nation — cannot afford is to turn trade policy into political ping pong, undoing one president’s work the moment power changes hands.

The courts should not be complicit in that game. For nearly a century, Congress has entrusted presidents with flexibility on trade, and courts have upheld it. To suddenly strip that authority now, in the middle of an election season, is not constitutional guardianship — it’s judicial politics.

For Utahns, this isn’t just a Washington fight. It’s about farmland, ranches, oil fields, steel, water, and the freedom of future generations. Tariffs are constitutional, they are essential to national security, and they are a first step toward restoring American independence and Utah’s long-term prosperity.

Cherilyn Bacon (then Bacon Eagar) was the first Republican woman to run for the U.S. Senate in Utah (2010). She later served as a Utah presidential elector in 2016 and hosted a talk show for several years.

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