Farmers are going bankrupt thanks to Trump's trade war

Trump’s trade war continues to wreak havoc on farms in the Midwest, with a sharp increase in farmers filing for bankruptcy over the past year.

And “the worst is likely yet to come,” the Star Tribune reports, based on an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis finding that the bankruptcy trend “has not yet seen a peak.”

Over the past year, 84 farms have filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcies in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. That’s twice as many as filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and 2014, according to the Star Tribune.

And Trump’s trade war is playing a significant role in driving these farmers into bankruptcy.

“The situation for most farmers has worsened since June under retaliatory tariffs that have closed the Chinese market for soybeans and damaged exports of milk and pork,” reports the Star Tribune.

“We’re waiting for the tariff problem to go away,” said Mark Miedtke, the president of Citizens State Bank in Hayfield.

The problems created by Trump’s trade war aren’t limited to farmers in the upper Midwest.

“A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which covers Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming and portions of Missouri and New Mexico, showed that more than half of bankers in the district reported lower farm income than a year ago,” the Star Tribune reports. “They also said they expect farm income to weaken in coming months.”

Some farmers are simply throwing in the towel. Wisconsin has seen the number of licensed dairies drop by about 1,200 since 2016.

In a desperate ploy to offset the financial pain he had caused farmers, Trump pledged billions of dollars in bailout money.

Farmers blasted the idea initially. And since then, the pathetically slow rollout of funds has been described as “too little, too late.”

Farmers aren’t the only ones suffering. Manufacturing is also taking a hit as companies like Harley-Davidson and GM close factories across the country.

Trump once boasted that trade wars are easy to win, but his blustering incompetence is bankrupting families and hurting the American economy.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.