US agriculture has become a ward of the state
The absolute last place farmers ever wanted to find themselves was beholden to someone other than themselves. The mere thought is repulsive to independent minded farmers. But that’s exactly where we farmers are — trapped.
Candidate Trump promised farmers and rural communities “better deals.” He hawked subjective descriptors like “ripped off,” “unfair“and ”disaster” in framing existing pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trans Pacific Partnership and any multilateral accord lacking the Trump brand. He railed against trade to China, claiming the imbalance of payments was somehow the fault of tepid U.S. political and business leadership.
To some degree, everyone believes they’ve gotten an unfair shake at something and Trump is a master at manipulating these fears. So when the president claimed they were being ripped off, farmers enthusiastically agreed.
Once in office Trump sealed the deal with a promise to rein in the Obama-era Waters of the U.S. rule that threatened the most basic of a farmer’s red lines — property rights.
Trump got busy. He declared in a feckless tweet that “trade wars are good and easy to win” and in early 2018 he began assaulting traditional trading partners and trusted allies with steel and aluminum tariffs. In an alltoo-common unchallenged move, he flanked Congress by perverting Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and hurled tariff salvos at will.
Since the farm financial crisis of the 1980s, agriculture has had one business plan and one marketing plan — trade.
The damage to agriculture and rural communities was immediate. Trading partners targeted U.S. imports of agricultural goods, rendering those products uncompetitive. Ag exports from the U.S. plummeted and prices paid to farmers followed. Markets which farmers spent decades developing evaporated into the ether in an instant.
Farmers should have known right there they bought a pig in a poke. But most remained obedient — and silent. Trump was polling north of 70% in farm country, so member-driven commodity organization and advocacy bureau “leadership” became followers and selfmuted. As Trump continued to stroke egos and replace lost market share with taxpayer dollars, local ag leadership reasoned if they lost their intestinal fortitude to soldier on, they would lose their members’ access to the White House.
By mid-summer of 2018, the retaliation from trading partners and allies caught the administration off guard. Advisers were either unaware of how sovereign nations would react, or worse, they were aware and didn’t care. The Smoot-hawley Act debacle of the 1930s and its contribution to the Great Depression was dismissed as an aberration.
In yet another “end around’ Congress, Trump hatched a plan to pump $12 billion of Commodity Credit Corporation funds into agriculture to make up for the lost revenue. Since Congress annually authorizes $30 billion in borrowing authority to the U.S. Department of Agriculture with no oversight after appropriation, the hush money was shoveled out the door unchallenged. With markets in tatters and prices below the cost of production, farmers had little choice but to grab hold of the lifeline, say “thank you sir,” shut up and hunker down.
Trump continued to embolden farmers by telling them they were patriots for taking one for the team. He juiced the message by falsely claiming the Treasury dollars he was “giving” them came from China. As he boasted it was their “patriotic duty” to be the tip of the spear, farmers went along and took the cash. With a crop in storage, mortgages to pay, and prices remaining below the cost of production, I too had little choice but to take the hush money.
But one payoff bandage wasn’t going to be enough to stop the hemorrhaging in rural America. Who knew that sovereign countries would dare to protect themselves and fight back?
The Trump administration has now sent farmers multiple cash bailouts to make up for their worldwide lost market share. Trump passed out $12 billion in 2018, $16 billion in 2019 and $19 billion in 2020. Congress is now mulling a fourth tranche north of $20 billion for additional COVID relief to the agricultural sector before the election. This is not sustainable agriculture.
Ag is a sleeping giant. It’s slow to wake, but when it does, the ground shakes and there is no stopping its trajectory. A brave awakening and a regaining of our collective voice is what it’s going to take to break free of this presidential snare, claw back agriculture’s status as a reliable trading partner and reestablish our good will relationship with the taxpayer.
Agriculture is a national security interest. As such, we need rural Americans to speak up and demand sustainable policy from their president. Ag deserves a visionary policy that can be explained to our nonfarm neighbors without having to hold our collective hats in hand.
Christopher Gibbs is an Ohio corn, soybean and cattle farmer, retired USDA official, past chairman of his county Republican Party and now president of the board of directors of Rural America 2020.