Trump's Agenda Of Sabotage, Plunder, Chaos, And Betrayal Is Coming For Red States And Red Places Too
Morning all. Both the NYT and Politico have prominent stories this morning about the escalating crisis in America’s farm economy brought about by Trump’s reckless tariffs and mass deportations.
From the NYT (gift link):
On a windy September morning, Josh and Jordan Gackle huddled to discuss the looming crisis facing their North Dakota soybean farm.
For the first time in the history of their 76-year-old operation, their biggest customer — China — had stopped buying soybeans. Their 2,300-acre soybean farm is projected to lose $400,000 in 2025. Soybeans that would normally be harvested and exported to Asia are now set to pile up in large steel bins.
Since President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in February, Beijing has retaliated by halting all purchases of American soybeans.
That decision has had devastating repercussions for farmers in North Dakota, which exported more than 70 percent of its soybeans to China before Trump unveiled the new tariffs this year. Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers that depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States.
Bill Wilson, a professor of agribusiness and applied economics at North Dakota State University, said that China would prefer that agricultural trade with the United States be as unrestricted as possible so that it can have access to American soybeans in the event of a dockworker strike or other disruption that interferes with its supplies in Brazil.
But China appears unlikely let go of its leverage over American farmers, and it may not be easy for them to recover.
“I have never seen as monumental a disruption in agriculture as we’re experiencing now,” said Mr. Wilson, who has been teaching at the university for 43 years. “These are turbulent, turbulent times.”
From Politico: ‘The whole thing is screwed up:’ farmers in Pennsylvania are struggling to find workers:
In Tioga County, where President Donald Trump won 75 percent of the vote in 2024, farmers are losing patience with the White House’s promise of a quick solution for farm workers. Their urgent need is highlighted by stories like those of a multigenerational dairy farm that sold off all its dairy cows because the owner could not find workers and another where a farmer’s job listings have received no responses.
Farmers in the rural region near the New York border say those stories are not unique.
“The whole thing is screwed up,” said John Painter, a three-time Trump voter who runs an organic dairy farm in Westfield. “We need people to do the jobs Americans are too spoiled to do.”
These are the voices Thompson and other farm-state lawmakers are hearing as they discuss potential solutions. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ assurances that American workers and machines can help close the gap ring hollow among farmers who have become reliant on migrant labor that is increasingly hard to find in the face of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The U.S. agricultural workforce fell by 155,000 — about 7 percent — between March and July, according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That tracks with Pew Research Center data that shows total immigrant labor fell by 750,000 from January through July. The labor shortage piles onto an ongoing economic crisis for farmers exacerbated by dwindling export markets that could leave them with crop surpluses.
“People don’t understand that if we don’t get more labor, our cows don’t get milked and our crops don’t get picked,” said Tim Wood, a dairy farmer and a member of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau board of directors
Painter voted for Trump three times, but he said he’s “very disappointed” in how the president has handled immigration policy this term.
“It’s not right, what they’re doing,” he said. “All of us, if we look back in history, including the president, we have somebody that came to this country for the American dream.”
The pain of the Trump agenda is hitting red states and red places hard. The ACA and Medicaid cuts are making health care more expensive and harder to access. Cuts to clean energy investments are increasing electricity and energy costs. The tariffs are cutting off foreign markets, turning foreign countries and consumers against America and raising prices on everything. Interest rates will are almost certainly going to remain too high due to rising inflation and our deteriorating fiscal condition. Mass deportation in a time of full employment has created severe worker shortages throughout rural areas of the country. The end to clean energy subsidies, general economic chaos, and an out of control DHS/ICE will slow investments into red states and red places, lessening opportunities for workers and young people there.
hopiumchronicles.com/p/trumps-agenda-of-sabotage-plunder
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