Trump-Xi Summit Yields No Iran Breakthrough

The 77-day conflict with Iran has sent fuel and fertilizer prices soaring for US farmers already battling drought and market volatility, exposing the domestic toll of President Donald Trump's military campaign in the Middle East.

Third-generation Iowa farmer Alan Montag and ninth-generation North Carolina grower Charles Harden describe conditions they have never seen before. Harden, whose family has tilled Bertie County soil since 1771, told interviewers the region is running a 12-inch rainfall deficit this year on top of last year's shortfall. His soybeans, corn, peanuts, cucumbers and cattle operation started 2026 in drought and shows no sign of relief. "Right now is harder than any time in the history of our country for agriculture," he said.

Across the Midwest and South, farmers report diesel and nitrogen fertilizer costs up sharply since the February 28 launch of US and Israeli strikes on Iran. The war's disruption of global energy routes, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, has kept oil prices elevated even as a fragile ceasefire holds. Trump has insisted the operation was necessary to block Iranian nuclear ambitions, yet he recently acknowledged on Fox News that seizing Tehran's enriched uranium stockpile is "more for public relations than it is for anything else."

Those remarks came during Trump's Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where the two leaders discussed reopening the strait but produced no concrete agreement to end hostilities. Xi reportedly told Trump he would not supply military equipment to Iran and expressed willingness to help stabilize the situation, yet Chinese officials continued to criticize the war as a violation of international norms that harms civilians across the region. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer claimed Beijing does not want to be "on the wrong side" of the issue, but the lack of a breakthrough leaves Hormuz still partially restricted to non-Iranian traffic.

The economic fallout lands squarely on American producers. Fertilizer, heavily dependent on natural gas, has become a major expense at planting time. Many farmers who expanded acreage expecting stable energy markets now face margins squeezed from both sides: higher input costs and uncertain export demand amid global uncertainty. Harden noted that even before the war, unfair commodity markets and policy volatility had already pushed family operations to the brink; the conflict simply accelerated the damage.

Trump administration officials argue the campaign achieved its core objectives by degrading Iranian naval and air capabilities and killing senior commanders. Yet the surviving Iranian leadership has retained leverage by controlling access to the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil moves. Negotiations over a long-term deal remain stalled, and third-party talks involving Lebanon and Israel have not altered the broader stalemate.

For farmers watching diesel prices and looking at half-empty grain bins, the disconnect between Washington rhetoric and field reality is stark. They see billions spent on distant strikes while domestic safety nets for agriculture remain underfunded and climate-driven weather extremes grow more frequent. The war that Trump once suggested would be quick has instead become another layer of pressure on an already fragile rural economy, with no clear off-ramp in sight.