Businesses in some Virginia counties won’t feel tariffs at all, but the ones who will feel them most are in rural areas.

This has been updated to clarify how these figures were computed.

Smyth County will feel the price of President Donald Trump’s tariffs more than anywhere else in Virginia. Some 11.7% of the companies there can expect to pay more for their raw materials.

In Charlotte County, the figure is 10% more. In Henry County, 9.8%.

Businesses in some other parts of Virginia won’t feel anything at all.

That’s according to a report issued by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond who have been tracking Trump’s evolving tariff plans and trying to compute what they mean “on the ground” in every county and city in the country, based on who the employers are there. They set out to compute which localities have industries that are reliant on imports that will face tariffs.

The most recent report by these Fed economists, issued late last week, gives us a clearer picture of how tariffs will ripple through the American economy. There are two general ways we have been thinking of tariffs: We picture manufacturers, such as automakers, reshoring jobs from overseas to avoid higher import duties. We also picture consumers forced to pay more for any imported goods they buy, from their morning coffee to the pillows they put their head on at night. There’s a third scenario, though, that hasn’t gotten as much attention: American manufacturers who depend on imports for some of their raw materials.

Trump’s goal with tariffs is to increase America’s manufacturing employment, but in some fields, tariffs could have the opposite effect, by raising the costs for certain American manufacturers — particularly if it’s difficult or impossible for them to find domestic sources for those raw materials. That, in turn, could discourage those manufacturers from expanding or, in a worst-case scenario, prompt those manufacturers to reduce employment.

That’s why the economics surrounding tariffs are so complicated — they are part of a larger business ecosystem, where tariffs could help some industries here and hurt others there. In general, though, the important thing to know is that tariffs are a tax, so tariffs raise the price of imports. When the Federal Reserve mapped the impact of tariffs geographically, based on which industries are where, a nuanced picture emerged: In many communities, the effective tariff rates seem relatively low, sometimes zero, because industries in those counties don’t depend on imported goods. For instance, in Alleghany County, where wood products are a major industry, the effective tariff rate is just 1.05%, meaning just 1.05% of the industries there rely on imports. In Northern Virginia, where there’s little manufacturing, the effective tariff rate is even lower. Some places are at absolutely zero, such as Bland County, Covington, Craig County, Dickenson County, Galax and Highland County.

Some places, though, do have employers that use a lot of imported goods. In those cases, the places that will feel the highest prices from tariffs are also many of the same places that Trump aims to help. That’s because many manufacturers rely on imported goods in some part of their industrial process. They are also almost universally in places that voted for Trump by wide margins, a consequence of Trump running so strongly in blue-collar communities, large and small.

The Federal Reserve says that, based on its employers, Quitman County, Georgia, has more exposure to tariffs than any other place in the country — and that, based on where those employers source their materials, 35.5% could see an increase in prices. The report calls this the “average effective tariff rate.”

Briscoe County, Texas, ranked second, with an average effective tariff rate of 31.3%.

In all, 14 counties — four in Georgia, two in Mississippi, two in Texas, one each in California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Washington state — all have industry mixes where 20% or more will face tariffs on their imports. You’ll notice in the map above that most of those are in the South, which reflects other trends that have reshaped the nation. Much of the nation’s industry is no longer in the so-called Rust Belt along the Great Lakes but in the Sun Belt. That’s a topic we’ll look at in a future column.

These counties where industries face high tariffs for imports are heavy in “textile manufacturing, furniture production, fabricated metals, wood products, miscellaneous manufacturing and agricultural support activities,” the report says. Fabrication firms might rely on imported metals, for instance. Agriculture deserves a special mention because it’s a sector that relies on both imports for fertilizer and exports for sales, which makes it vulnerable to both U.S. tariffs on imports and retaliatory tariffs from other nations on exports. Fertilizers are often made from potash, and 85% of that comes from Canada. That’s not a case of something we can reshore; that’s where the potash is in the ground. That’s also why many agricultural counties rank for a higher level of exposure to tariffs.

If you’re wondering why this list is different from others we’ve looked at lately, it’s because they measure different things. I previously wrote a column focused simply on which Virginia localities are most vulnerable to retaliatory tariffs on our exports that could be imposed by a single country — Canada, our biggest export customer. This report looks at the full range of tariffs that Trump has imposed on imports, and how they will hit geographically, based on which industries predominate in which places. These aren’t just apples and oranges, they are apples (which we export) and avocados (which we import). That’s how we get disparities such as these: Buena Vista shows up on this report as having 0% exposure to tariffs for the products that its industries import, because apparently they don’t import any. However, Buena Vista shows up as being the most vulnerable community in the state when it comes to retaliatory tariffs on the products that companies there make and export. 

With that explanation, let’s look at the map:

In Virginia, Loudoun County, with its high-tech economy in “Data Center Alley,” will see just under 1.9% impacted by tariffs, the report says, Fairfax County just 0.3%. Many counties in Southwest and Southside rank much higher — all the way up to Smyth County’s 11.7% — because they are manufacturing and agricultural counties. Nationally, you’ll see that many of the localities that will face the highest tariffs are in the so-called Rust Belt, from upstate New York to Wisconsin.

That means the industrial counties most likely to benefit from tariffs — if higher taxes on imports do succeed in reshoring some manufacturing — will feel the most pain as Trump’s plan takes effect. It also means that the counties that will feel the highest tariffs are Trump-voting counties. In Virginia, the level of support for Trump in the highest-tariff counties rarely dips below 70%, and only once is less than 65%.

Here are the 10 localities in Virginia facing the highest effective tariffs and their vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election:

Politically, you can read this at least two ways. One way is that Trump is courting political trouble by making his own supporters pay the highest price for his policies. The other way to look at this is that Trump has lots of leeway to pursue a high-tariff policy. His supporters may be more patient than Wall Street, business executives or, say, political commentators. Even if many of Trump’s supporters peel away from him over high tariffs, he has a lot of cushion left. These highest-tariff counties are all in Republican congressional districts and not ones that are likely to be in play in the midterms. A Democratic group, House Majority Forward, is already running anti-tariff ads in 13 swing districts across the country. Two of those are in Virginia — the 1^st District, now held by Republican Rob Wittman of Westmoreland County, and the 2^nd District held by Jen Kiggans of Virginia Beach. Those may be the two most vulnerable Republican districts, based on their voting histories, but they are also mostly home to counties on the lower end of the tariff scale, based on this report. Democrats could face a situation where they can persuade voters in districts that are still unwinnable but not have enough voters in the most competitive districts who are directly affected by tariffs.

Regardless of the politics, though, we can now see what the price of tariffs is and who will have to pay them. 

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