Pain of strategy with China tests farmers’ faith in Trump
OSSEO, Wis. — From the start, President Donald Trump’s combative trade strategy toward China has carried the promise that short-term pain inflicted on farmers would be worth the longer-term gains for American producers, from agriculture to technology.
As the trade war intensifies, faith in that proposition among the president’s most stalwart rural fans is being tested.
“How long is shortterm?” Shane Goplin, a sixth-generation farmer growing soybeans and corn in west-central Wisconsin, wondered as he maneuvered his 16-row John Deere planter.
China was the largest buyer of American soybeans until tit-for-tat tariffs all but halted the flow. And this month, souring prospects for a trade deal again sent prices tumbling. Trump responded Thursday by announcing a $16 billion package to help those hurt by the dispute.
The strategy might help shore up farmers’ support for Trump before the 2020 election, but it leaves them with a perplexing question: What does success look like?
Despite the strain on Goplin’s family bank account and peace of mind, he backs the president’s tactics.
“I get why he’s doing it,” he said over the tractor’s whir and beeps. “America has been bullied.” And if the trade war persisted through the election, he added, “I would be OK with that.”
Federal help is important, Goplin said. The administration’s previous $12 billion package of emergency aid meant the difference between profit and loss on his soybeans. Judging whether an agreement will prove worth the cost, though, is trickier to calculate. Several farmers said that if Trump declared he had struck a good deal with China, they would take his word for it.
“I don’t think he’ll flinch until he gets what he wants,” said Lorenda Overman, a crop and pig farmer in eastern North Carolina. “He doesn’t mind playing hardball.”
What constitutes win?
Other growers suggested a bump in soybean prices or a drop in the country’s trade deficit with China would signal a victory.
Like other farmers throughout the Midwest and South, Goplin worries, as the standoff with China continues, that soybean producers such as Brazil and Argentina could permanently displace American suppliers.
That is a risk, he said — like the extreme weather, tight credit and volatile prices that have whipsawed farmers’ fortunes over the past decade. And with declining profits, heavier-thannormal debt loads and rising farm bankruptcies in the Midwest, Goplin, 45, understands that for some growers, it is too late.
He had finished planting 500 acres of soybeans this month, a few days after the president announced on Twitter he was imposing additional tariffs on China. Now, under a postcard-perfect cerulean sky, Goplin was spending 16 to 18 hours a day getting corn into 2,000 acres of soil. After he completed a patch, he folded the retractable 20-foot-long planting tubes as if they were butterfly wings and got ready to drive to the next field.
For him, one measure of success would be a reduction in the nation’s soybean surplus — known as the crop carry-over. Last month, the Department of Agriculture forecast the soybean carryover would reach 895 million bushels in September, more than twice what it was in 2018.
In that sense, American farmers are victims of their success, producing more grain and food than the world market can absorb. At the same time, farmers in other countries, sometimes aided by government subsidies or import quotas, are scrambling for a share of the market, pushing down prices.
Goplin talked about the tangle of trade and oversupply with his friend Joe Bragger, a sixth-generation dairy farmer in nearby Buffalo County. They sat at Bragger’s kitchen table drinking bottles of Moon Man beer as Bragger’s wife, Noel, prepared burgers and potato salad. A teacher, she also cares for the farm’s 32,000 pullets.
Joe Bragger, 53, a large man with an infectious laugh, has a voice that squeaks like a backyard swing set when he gets excited. He had just returned from Altoona, Wis., where he listened to Vice President Mike Pence speak at what Bragger called a “pep rally.”
“We’ve been in it for — how long, Shane? — two years now, squabbling and tweeting,” Bragger said of this administration’s brawling over trade. “I can tolerate a few more. ”
$40,000 tweet
Goplin laughed. “Last Sunday’s tweet, it cost ...” He paused, recalling that the day after Trump warned on Twitter that he was putting additional tariffs on Chinese goods, the price of a bushel of soybeans dropped more than 10 cents.
“How much did it cost you?” Bragger said.
Goplin said: “$40,000. It was a $40,000 tweet.”
Pence used his trip to Wisconsin to tout the administration’s trade deal with Mexico and Canada, a pact awaiting congressional approval the vice president said would help farmers.
To Bragger, who with his family owns 330 cows and 1,300 acres where he plants corn, soybeans and hay crops for his livestock, this latest North America trade deal is a “distraction.” For a dairy farmer, he said, the difference between the previous trade treaty with Canada and the Trump administration’s new one could be produced by a single large Wisconsin farm.
That doesn’t mean he is against the new treaty. He thinks it is insignificant compared with the real problem, oversupply.
Yet the comparison with the Canadian deal raises a question: Could the prolonged dispute with China produce a similar outcome, a relatively trivial gain — only in this case, one that carries devastating costs for some soybean farmers?
“At the end of the day, fixing some of these other trade deals for the rest of our country, I’m OK with it,” Bragger said. “I’m not going to say don’t finish it,” he said of the China conflict. “The whole world is watching. I’ll support the trade war to the end.”
Bragger and Goplin acknowledged other farmers were in worse shape. Goplin, for example, locked in higher prices on much of this year’s corn and soy crops.
“If I didn’t market anything right, and didn’t have any protection on the majority of my farm, I’d be scared to death,” Goplin said.