Farmers for Trump?

I’ve seen the signs and wondered about that. Why would farmers be for Trump? Don’t they already have enough trouble?

He started a massive trade war with China that caused a catastrophic drop in international farm trade. In 2017, China imported $19.5 billion in agricultural goods from American farmers. In 2018, that dropped to $9.2 billion, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. That’s $10 billion loss in ONE year.

The American Farm Bureau maintains that “farmers have lost the vast majority of what was once a $24 billion market in China.”

As the Chinese have turned to South America and to Europe for the soybeans and other ag products that they need, it will be di cult for American farmers to wrest these markets back for themselves.

Trump is placating the famers with bailouts as massive as their losses. In 2019 it was over $23 billion and this year, it’s expected to be over $32 billion.

So who loses on this deal? The American taxpayer. Those of us who pay taxes that is. Please remember that the Trump tari on Chinese goods is also paid by us.

And there are more losers … small farmers, who need the subsidy most, are in general le out of the deal. While the largest “industrial scale” farms received half of all the dollars given out in multimillion dollar payments, small farmers have had to make do with around $5,000 each.

So Trump disrupts the markets, causes huge losses for farmers, then buys o the richest of them with our tax dollars. Does that apply to the farmers around here?