Farmers blast Trump on his trade war: ‘You better watch out’
Farmers aren’t buying Trump’s multi-billion dollar ‘farm bailout.’ They know it’s just Trump using tax dollars to clean up his own mess.
Farmers are fighting back against Trump’s trade war, and they aren’t fooled by the Trump administration’s attempt to put a $12 billion bandaid on the mess it’s made with tariffs.
In interviews with ABC News, farmers said they want Trump to fix his trade war rather than ply them with tax dollars.
Minnesota farmer Wanda Pastche was blunt: “I don’t want free money. I don’t want bailouts. I want trade. Trade is what works.” Patsche grows corn and soybeans while also raising pigs.
Michael Slattery, who grows soybeans, corn, wheat and alfalfa in Wisconsin, said, “This is an election ploy. And we as farmers are playing the dupes again in this whole process.”
Brian Kuehl, executive director of Farmers for Free Trade, had a warning for Trump, telling Politico, “Agriculture is a giant and it takes a while to wake it up, but when it wakes up you better watch out.”
Farmers were among the first to get hit directly by the trade war. In just one example, American pork farmers are looking at over a billion dollars in lost revenue. Jim Heimerl, president of National Pork Producers Council, called the policy “devastating to my family and pork producing families across the United States.”
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R), who opposes the policy, described the effect of Trump’s actions as “catastrophic” for the farmers in his state. Trump even admitted farmers, some of whom were his biggest supporters, will experience “pain,” which a top Trump official likened to the woes of weight loss.
In an attempt to quell concerns, Trump made a public statement alongside EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, claiming the EU would soon “buy a lot of soybeans.” But he offered no concrete steps to defuse the trade war, nor did he address the fact that China’s retaliatory tariffs on soybeans have caused major problems for farmers.
Americans by a 2-to-1 margin reject the trade war and believe that it will hurt consumers. And farmers are rejecting Trump’s plans to squander tax dollars.
Trump has created a mess and has nobody to blame but himself.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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