Governor Hochul: “What I want to continue doing as a Governor who understands this industry and how critical it is, is to keep making investments… We have spent a great deal of money in our Budget. Agricultural spending is up 60 percent in our Budget since I became Governor.”

Hochul: “I want to know the impacts of tariffs on our farmers and people across the State. Because I have to be able to quantify this and use this to build the argument when I'm speaking to our legislators, our Republican members of Congress who are in the majority in Washington, when I go to the White House. I want to have the stories, the data and be able to talk about the impact that these tariffs have had on the State of New York… This is the last thing our agricultural community needs — or our entire state needed — and this is now the reality we're having to deal with.”

Earlier on Mar 4th, Governor Kathy Hochul convened a roundtable with farmers and agriculture leaders impacted by the Trump administration’s tariff policy. The Governor discussed global competitiveness and international markets in the wake of the Trump Administration’s trade tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, and encouraged businesses — including farms across New York State — to report the effects of these tariffs on their work to [email protected] .

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Morning, everyone. How are you?

[...]

Well, I went to the Taste New York event last night at the Convention Center. Jim, I saw your son. It's great to see all of you again, and what a great celebration of agriculture in the State of New York. I love this event. I go every single year. I get to see the future farmers of America. I always encourage those young people to continue with their studies and know that someday, they'll take their place among the great people who make this state so extraordinary, and that is our farmers.

I'm well aware that it's an $8.5 billion industry. This is critical to our success, critical to our economy, but also critical to our ability to just take care of our people and feed them the fresh fruits, and produce, and dairy that you manage and grow on your farms — over 32,000 family farms. That's extraordinary. Now the numbers have been trending downward. I'd love to see that get higher, but that is something that is so important to the fabric of our state, and I want you to know — having represented in Congress one of the most rural areas of our state — that's how I got to know Jim and his family; that I've been to so many farms.

I've been there in the early season, when you go to an apple farm and it's been a harsh year, and you open up, and take a look, and you see that the stem is already dying and it may not produce any fruit for the entire year. I've seen that, I've seen the struggles of our dairy farmers. The price of milk vacillating so intensely, but everybody's so resilient.

That's what I love about our farmers. There's nothing that keeps them down because they've seen it all. The invasive species, the floods, the droughts, the global marketplace, and yet they keep coming back every single day, waking up and doing their job again — and really inspiring, oftentimes, the next generation.

So many family farms are out there, and I was very sensitive as I walked through last night talking to a lot of farmers, and they're so proud of what they've created and proud that it's made in New York — whether it's the maple syrup or the amazing apples. We are top 10 commodities in so many areas nationwide.

And I know our commission, we talk about this all the time, our great pride in this. What I want to continue doing as a Governor who understands this industry and how critical it is, is to keep making investments. We've done a number of things since I've been Governor. We have spent a great deal of money in our Budget. Agricultural spending is up 60 percent in our Budget since I became Governor. I want to make these investments and I want to continue making those. And, also, making sure we have the tax credits in place to assist you and other ways we can be supportive.

The Farm Bureau President, Dave Fisher, and I are very close. I was walking around with him yesterday. I know he had to head off to Washington because today is the day that they're talking about tariffs, and when I think about all the stress that's on you all day long already, and now you have to factor in, “What are these tariffs going to do to my business? How will I overcome this?”

Our trading partners like Canada and Mexico — particularly Canada, though. I mean, we're right on the border, right on the border. And there's such an easy flow of commerce back and forth, and we rely on this — it's so important to all of us. But, I want to hear from you today: What is the impact that you're projecting now that tariffs will have on your business? Because they're saying for an average family, the costs could go anywhere from $1,300 to $3,000 higher a year starting this year, because of the tariffs that are in place as of today with Canada and Mexico.

Now, I know the argument is that fentanyl is flowing over the Canadian borders. It was coming in for a while, not anywhere near the scale we saw on the southern border, but it is down to about 1 percent of the fentanyl that comes in this country comes over from Canada. And Canada has a very long border. But I, just to make sure, have sent reinforcements. Our State Police are up on the border assisting to make sure we can interdict any illegal drugs that come across the border to help the federal government.

We're taking care of this. We're focused on this. But I just think that it’s a ruse for finding an opportunity to really turn our relationships upside down with important countries that we rely on for partnership and markets for us. And if we lose them, they're going to have retaliatory tariffs for us. You want to be able to have this uninterrupted flow of commerce, but now we're going to be looking at these additional price tags because of the tariffs. I think it's just an excuse.

As I said, we exported $22 billion worth of goods to Canada. They send over all kinds of supplies, fuel, aluminum, steel — you're going to be rebuilding and we're trying to rebuild our economy — it's been a tremendously beneficial relationship. But we also want to gather, not just here but going forward, I want to know the impacts of tariffs on our farmers and people across the State. Because I have to be able to quantify this and use this to build the argument when I'm speaking to our legislators, our Republican members of Congress who are in the majority in Washington, when I go to the White House. I want to have the stories, the data and be able to talk about the impact that these tariffs have had on the State of New York.

And so we have [email protected] as a place, we'll get that all to all of you. And I want to make sure that we do hear the impacts, because, like I said, you have enough to worry about. This is the last thing our agricultural community needs — or our entire state needed — and this is now the reality we're having to deal with.

With that, I want to turn it over to Commissioner Ball and thank him for his leadership. As I mentioned, I know Jim Bittner is our President of the Council of Agricultural Organizations and Kim Skellie is our Vice President of the Farm Bureau. And again, I know Dave is off in Washington right now, right?

So we'll make sure that — send him our best, Kim. Send him our best. We saw him yesterday. Commissioner Ball, let me turn it over to you.