New York’s dairy farms — the largest segment of the state’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry — are closely watching the exploding trade tensions between Canada and the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump’s tariff tit-for-tat could soon expand to a new target. The president is teasing potential new tariffs on Canadian dairy products, which could trigger retaliation by Canada.

“Canada has been ripping us off for years,” Trump said in the Oval Office Friday.

Farmers in New York and around the United States have long voiced frustration with Canadian policies protecting that country’s dairy farmers from foreign competition.

“The more we can export and have access to international markets, the better,” Allyson Jones-Brimmer with the Northeast Dairy Producers Association told Spectrum News. "Also, Canada is located very close to us, making them a very ideal market for our products.”

Canadian policies include a trigger that allows Canada to impose tariffs of more than 200% if milk imports from the U.S. hit a certain threshold. The president has repeatedly cited that figure, although the U.S. is currently not hitting the required threshold.

Economists say that the best-case scenario for this sort of tariff threat would be to get Canada to open the door to more U.S. products.

But, Gary Hufbauer with the Peterson Institute for International Economics warns, “The more likely outcome is that the U.S. puts on some new restrictions, new tariffs. Canada likely just mimics them.”

“Instead of dairy trade increasing, [it] goes down,” he continued.

Caught in the middle are New York dairy farmers, who are already feeling the impact of the broader tariff whiplash of the past few weeks. Shane St. Cyr with Adirondack Farms in Clinton County told Spectrum News some of his feed comes from Canada.

“What’s going on today has certainly increased some of our inputs and decreased the price we get for milk, which has an impact on our bottom line and our family farm for sure,” he said.

As of this moment, he said he is probably looking at a 7-10% change to his bottom line for the year — and "not in the positive."

Whether President Trump will move ahead with additional tariffs on Canada and the dairy industry is unclear. He is, so far, expected to launch a broader reciprocal tariff push early next month.