Farmers’ Pain from Trade Wars

So…some Trump supporters are finally starting to feel the pain from his trade policies. I wish the farmers could have been perspicuous enough to know that Trump was going to make life miserable for everybody, not just for people with brown skin. I don’t know what the farmers where looking for when they voted for Trump. I don’t think they were the economically disadvantaged because they had their own business and appeared to be doing fine before the tariffs, although farming is supposed to be a difficult business. I don’t think they were against the global trade since they do a lot of trade globally – at least that is what I’ve read. They do live in the rural areas so immigration or “brown people”, or in code “the wall”, may have been the reason, but there are many farmers who rely on immigrants because they can’t get whites to do the job, so then again, maybe not. Maybe farmers, as a class, are evangelicals, so social issues such as gay or transgenders might have been the driving force. Or maybe it’s the swamp in Washington that drove them into Trump’s arms. I just don’t know what they saw in Trump.

But it would have been nice if they had realized you can’t ignore the cruelty and expect to come out okay. The head of the farmers’ union said it would be many decades before we recover from the trade war. I’m not sure he or the other farmers realize the magnitude of the damage accruing from their error in judgment.

It will be at least two generations if not more before the world trusts America again as its partner, in anything, because the world cannot trust the American voters’ judgement. All current living adults, even young adults, now face the prospect of permanently lowered living quality of life – for the rest of our life.

First, we voted in George Bush during his second election, even though by then it was starting to look like we had been played and we never did find those weapons of mass destruction. It took a Katrina disaster, less than a year later, to wake up the American voters (actually, the Republican voters since they were the ones voting him in). But, when we voted in Obama as president we regained the respect because we actually voted in a black man with a strange name as president. It brought hope to the world.

But then the Tea Party rose and all of the caterwauling that went along with them: the protests against the Obamacare, the cry of “death panels”, the constant push to bring their guns everywhere to show how patriotic they were. There was an embarrassing time when a town in Texas thought Obama was having a military exercise near their town so that the administration could take their guns. The Tea Party held many protests against Obama (and not once did the Democrats talk about running over the protesters with cars). There were constant heart stopping Congressional showdowns in regards to spending and budgets. I can imagine most of the world looking on America and wondering if the country had gone crazy. Most, if not all, developed countries have some form of universal health care, so other developed countries must be wondering how we have a system such as ours that excludes a lot of people from healthcare and bring financial ruin to many. I’m sure from where they stood, our system looks cruel. And other countries probably see us as kooks for having such a love affair with our guns because we have so many guns in our country and along with it, so many more mass shootings than anywhere in the developed world. They must be asking, “What’s wrong with the Americans?” It’s almost like we’re having sex with our guns. (As I’m writing this, I just received news that someone is roaming around in Odessa, Texas shooting people. So, what is wrong with us?)

And then America voted in Trump who goes on to trash our trade and relationships with our allies. And starts trade wars that could be ruinous.

So, after Trump, the world cannot trust American voters’ judgement for a couple of generations.

I don’t know if the current group of Americans are ever going to learn. They didn’t learn from their mistake in choosing George Bush, so I doubt they will be introspective enough to ask how or why did they ever fall for Trump. Because for some of the independents, the Democrats, the Latinos, the Blacks and the never Trumpers, the signs of incompetence and cruelty were all there. For the 55% of the population, they could see he was unfit; it was just that obvious.

So I’m mad and sad that the farmers didn’t care enough about the pain of others (child separation, babies in cages, deaths of some children, unhygienic conditions); it’s almost like those voters reveled in the cruelty toward others. They were all in for Trump “to git the gittings while the gittings were good”. But when the “gittings” turn to pain, then they cry that Trump is not fit for the job.

It’s too late for that.

And, now for all of us adults, our quality of life will degrade for the rest of our lives because we made such a hugely poor judgement.

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Other good writings that covers this topic. Again, I wish I could write as well.

This one provides background insight about the rural support and specifically farm trade.

“Yet farmers are hurting financially. Investors are worried about a possible recession for the economy as a whole, but the farm recession is already here, with falling incomes, rising delinquency rates and surging bankruptcies. And the farm economy’s troubles stem directly from Trump’s policies.

This apparent contradiction — Trump is inflicting the greatest harm on the people who supported him most — isn’t an accident. Farmers’ past support for Trump was predictable: The demography and culture of (white) rural America make it fertile ground for politicians promising to restore traditional society, and especially traditional racial hierarchy. But farmers’ financial distress should also have been predictable: While rural America may dislike and distrust cosmopolitan elites, the U.S. farm economy is hugely dependent on global markets, and it has inevitably been a major victim of the Trumpian trade war.

…The questions, looking forward, are whether farmers understood what they were getting themselves into, whether they understand even now that their distress isn’t likely to end anytime soon, and whether economic pain will shake their support for the man who’s causing it.”

New York Times, “The Frauding of America’s Farmers”, Paul Krugman, August 30, 2019.

Farmers are not the only ones facing questions about their support; evangelicals are going to be facing their own reckoning. Young people are leaving religion. This article just rips the evangelicals.

“What you hear about is the phonies, the charlatans who wave Bibles, the theatrically pious, and they are legion. Vice President Mike Pence wears his faith like a fluorescent orange vest. But when he visited the border this summer and saw human beings crammed like cordwood in the Texas heat, that faith was invisible.

…As hard as it to see God Part II boasting about grabbing a woman’s genitals, paying hush money to a porn actress, or calling neo-Nazis “very fine people,” millions of overtly religious Americans believe in some version of Jesus Trump, Superstar.

…White evangelical Christians, the rotting core of Trump’s base, profess to be guided by biblical imperatives. They’re not. Their religion is Play-Doh. They have become more like Trump, not the other way around. It’s a devil’s pact, to use words they would understand.”

New York Times, “This is why people hate religion”, Timothy Egan, August 30, 2019.

And then there is a professor who teaches government: he is losing faith in our democracy.

“I am now hesitant defending what I used to refer to as the “genius” of the framers of the Constitution because I no longer have confidence in the checks and balances that James Madison assured us were “auxiliary precautions” to prevent our government from going off the rails at times when the wisdom of the American people is faulty. The faultiness of that wisdom is, in my mind, on vivid display by the man they chose to lead the nation.

It is hard for me now, in discussing the voting behavior of Americans, to grasp what kind of desperation prompted so many of my fellow citizens to choose and now enthusiastically support a man who has degraded the office of the presidency. How can American citizens in whom sovereignty resides have acted so irresponsibly? I will grant, however, that the alternative was not a good one. But that also speaks to serious flaws in the system.”

USA Today, “I’ve taught US government for 40 years. Thanks to Trump, I’m doubting the Founders’ plan.”, Ross K. Baker, August 30, 2019.