The skinny on Trump's tariffs …

In a recent article, USA Today considered President Donald Trump's trade wars to be among the top news stories of the year.

"Few states fell into the crossfires of President Donald Trump's trade wars more than Wisconsin," USA Today reported in a Wednesday article titled, “50 stories from 50 states that moved us in 2018.”

Rob Parmentier, the CEO of a Wisconsin-based boat manufacturer, expressed his take on the matter.

"It's been catastrophic," Parmentier told USA Today in October.

Retaliatory tariffs from China, Europe, Canada and Mexico came in response to Trump's tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. Those trade barriers affected everything from manufacturing to farming – including the state's iconic dairy industry.

Wholesale cheese and butter prices slumped in the summer as farmers faced an oversupply of milk and tensions with Wisconsin's top two trading partners – Canada and Mexico.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) urged fellow Wisconsinites to "be patient" with the tariffs.

Meanwhile, hundreds of dairy farms closed across the state – about 430 by September.

Tori Whiting of The Heritage Foundation in October spoke in detail about the issues in Wisconsin. She did not think anyone should be surprised – adding tariffs are taxes that ultimately end up harming the consumer.

"When a company in the U.S. is subject to higher tariffs, that essentially means that they're having to pay more to buy their inputs, and that puts a strain on their capital spending – the amount of liquid cash that they have to spend – and that results in those people having to make those choices," Whiting explained to OneNewsNow in an interview. "If they increase their prices too much, Americans may not want to buy their goods – m aybe they decide to curtail their capital spending to expand their factory or hire new workers. So, it really puts a strain on their ability to plan for the future and their ability to do things that they would be doing to grow their company."

Still, the Trump administration has argued that the U.S. has been taken advantage of by countries.

"We have been mistreated by many – sometimes fairly," Trump argued at a press conference in March. "And I don't blame the countries. I blame our leadership for allowing it to happen."