Amid trade war, many farmers are conflicted about Trump views
NEW ORLEANS — A year ago, President Donald Trump received a hero’s welcome at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s 99th annual convention in Nashville, Tenn., cheered for rolling back regulations, revamping an Obama administration water rule and for being the first president to address the group in 25 years.
In New Orleans on Monday, he made good on last year’s promise to return for the group’s centennial meeting.
“What can I do? I like farmers,” Trump told the appreciative crowd after traveling from a snow-covered Washington that remained frozen in a partial government shutdown, in a funding impasse over his proposed southern border wall.
But the cheers he received, from those who waited in hourlong security lines to hear him speak inside the city’s riverfront convention center, belied a more complicated relationship with America’s farmers, who have largely supported him.
Most still do, though they have been hurt in recent months by the tariffs that top trading partners have slapped on U.S. farm products, in retaliation for the tariffs Trump first imposed on their country’s goods. And now, a shuttered government isn’t processing the subsidy checks that many farmers rely on.
“If there’s one thing farmers need and want, it’s reliability and predictability,” said Jamie Johansson, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation.
“The angst you will find is, he has not provided that in the tariff situation around trade,” Johansson said. “But when he ran, we knew exactly what we were getting.”
Although Trump won support across the country’s heartland, he has long been clear about his hard-line, protectionist positions on trade. As president, he has followed through on ending the United States’ participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the farm bureau supported for the new markets it would have opened in other Pacific Rim nations; he renegotiated the quarter-centuryold North American Free Trade Agreement; and he’s taken a confrontational approach to try to reverse the U.S. trade deficit with China, so far unsuccessfully.
For many farmers, the trade tension especially with China has meant unpredictability, lost market share and lower prices for their products, while the shutdown has left some growers unable to get loans and subsidies essential for the looming season. The Agriculture Department is among the agencies shut down, its annual funding hostage to the standoff over the $5.7 billion Trump wants for a wall.
The president, in effect, counseled patience. “We’re doing trade deals that are going to get you so much business, you won’t believe it,” he told them. “A lot of great things are going to happen.”
“We are fighting for the American farmer and we are fighting for the American dream and for the products made and grown with pride right here in the USA,” Trump said near the end of his speech. “The greatest harvest is yet to come.”
Yet Trump spent much of his speech talking about illegal immigration and the wall he wanted to build. The president insisted that, despite his tough talk, he would make it easier for foreign farm workers to cross the border for seasonal jobs — comments that drew some of the biggest applause.
Although Trump made the case that he had been a friend to farmers, he did not directly acknowledge the tough times that they now faced because of his trade and border wall actions.
He touted the 2017 tax cuts that reduced the number of individuals subject to the estate tax, although, contrary to his and Republicans’ claims, few of the wealthy beneficiaries are small farmers and ranchers. The president also boasted of his efforts to cut regulations, increase the availability of corn-based ethanol at gas stations and pass a farm bill in December.
But the tit-for-tat tariffs since Trump began the current trade war — the United States has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of goods, or half of all imports from China, which in turn has put new tariffs on $110 billion in U.S. goods, or 85 percent.