FREMONT —Friday was when the reckoning begins. That’s the day President Trump’s first wave of tariffs kicked in, hitting China with $34 billion of new taxation on imports. Hundreds of billions more are just over the horizon.

China will respond, taking aim at American pork, poultry, soybeans and corn. So if you’re a Hoosier soybean farmer, and an overwhelming majority of these sturdy folks voted for Trump in 2016, this presents a dilemma. The guy you sent to Washington to drain the swamp, tell it like it is, and shake things up, is now fiddlin’ with your bottom line.

The American Soybean Association is putting President Trump’s tariffs into perspective: Soybeans are the No. 1 U.S. agricultural export, with sales of $27 billion last year according to the Foreign Agricultural Service. Of those $27 billion in soy exports, $14 billion worth of soy and soy products were sold to China, which has stated it will retaliate in-kind to the administration’s Section 301 tariffs, with a 25-percent tariff falling on U.S. soybeans. According to a study conducted by Purdue University, it is projected that China’s soybean imports from the U.S. would fall by 65 percent and total U.S. soy exports would drop by 37 percent.

According to the ASA, Brazil is already the world’s largest soybean exporter and is poised to fill the void in the event that U.S. soy exports to China decrease. Over the next 10 years, Chinese demand for soybeans is projected to grow from 97 million metric tons in 2017 to 143 million metric tons in 2027 — more than 10 times the U.S. soy exports to the European Union.

“There is room for us to grow our exports to China, which has proved to be a robust and vital marketplace, and we should be focused on ways to expand trade instead of restricting it with tariffs,” the soybean association said.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Purdue agricultural economist Chris Hurt: “The total value of this year’s U.S. corn, soybean and wheat crops has dropped about $13 billion, or 10 percent, since the start of June.”

Hoosier Ag Today reports Indiana soybean plantings are up 4 percent this year. What that means is that planting decisions made after the 2017 harvest showed Hoosier farmers are even more invested in soybeans. The Trump tariffs came just as this year’s crops were gathered and planted.

According to Axios, researchers at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University estimate that over four years, a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybean imports by Beijing would result in an average 87 percent decline in income for a midsize Illinois grain farm.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is starting an ad campaign against the tariffs. “The administration is threatening to undermine the economic progress it worked so hard to achieve,” Chamber President Tom Donohue explained. “We should seek free and fair trade, but this is just not the way to do it.”

President Trump remains defiant on his tariffs, telling Fox News last Sunday, “Every country is calling every day, saying, ‘Let’s make a deal, let’s make a deal.’ It’s going to all work out.”

It had better. CNN’s MoneyWatch reports: Farmers are dying by suicide at a higher rate than any other occupational group, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The suicide rate in the field of farming, fishing and forestry is 84.5 per 100,000 people, more than five times that of the population as a whole.

Purdue’s Chris Hurt weighs in: ”Think about trying to live today on the income you had 15 years ago.”

In 1985, Indiana hosted the first Farm Aid benefit concert, a group formed by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young.

Farm Aid Communications Director Jennifer Fahy observed, “The farm crisis was so bad, there was a terrible outbreak of suicide and depression.” Today, she said, “I think it’s actually worse.”

And this is before President Trump’s tariffs take hold.

Former Indiana Republican congressman David McIntosh, who once represented the agriculture-rich 6th Congressional District and now heads the Club For Growth, sees a disaster looming.

“I think we should push the Chinese on intellectual property,” McIntosh said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “But I don’t think we should put tariffs on Chinese goods. Those, by the way, are paid by Americans, not by the Chinese. If you enter into a trade war with them, the whole world economy will shrink. That’s the problem for us. Tariffs bring counter-tariffs and you get into a trade war. We saw it before the Great Depression; we have seen it other times where it just leads to everybody being worse off. It will end up being a disaster.”

Yes, the 1920s ended with the Great Depression.

Former Republican operative Steve Schmidt sounded alarms for Hoosier soybean farmers. “The consequences of this will be paid for by the American workers, the soybean farmers, because when those markets go, they’re gone,” said Schmidt, who renounced the GOP last week. “They’ll go to Brazil when the supply chain is interrupted.”

The reckoning has arrived.

Brian A. Howey of Nashville is publisher of Howey Politics Indiana at howeypolitics.com. Find him on Facebook and Twitter @hwypol.