GOP senator says Trump hurting farmers is 'doing the right thing'

During an interview with Fox Business last Tuesday, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said Trump is “doing the right thing” with the trade war, even as she admitted that “our farmers are feeling the pinch.”

Ernst went on CNN Sunday to talk more about the harm Trump’s policies are inflicting on farmers.

“The tariffs are hurtful right now,” Ernst said. “This is a really difficult situation that the farmers are in. Just to remind the viewers that 1 in 5 jobs in Iowa is tied directly to trade. Most of that is around the farming sector, our agricultural sector. So it is very tense times.”

But earlier in May, Ernst defended the pain Trump is causing, saying, “I’m just going to write it off as just his way of doing business.”

Ernst may brush it off, but Trump’s way of doing business means farmers across the country are filing for bankruptcies at the highest rates in a decade. Trump’s trade war cost the state of Nebraska alone $1 billion.

Farmers are rebelling against Trump as losses mount and the trade war has no end in sight.

“We spent 40 years developing this trade relationship with China and in one fell swoop, it was all taken away,” Bret Davis, a fourth-generation soybean farmer, told Axios.

Trump rolled out a second bailout for farmers, pledging an additional $16 billion in taxpayer funds to farmers to make up for the damage he is causing. But farmers aren’t the only ones hurting.

Thanks to multiple tariffs implemented by Trump, household items like washing machines cost about $100 more than they used to. Even toys are going to be more expensive. The beer industry blames Trump for costing it 40,000 jobs over the last two years.

Adding it all together, Trump is essentially giving Americans a $72 billion tax hike.

But in the eyes of Ernst, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, Trump is not doing anything wrong. Rather than stand up to Trump, Ernst called the harm he is causing farmers and the tax hike on American consumers, “the right thing.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.