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I realize that for many readers of this website, “rural” is more of a concept than a daily lived experience. If you don’t encounter it for yourself, I can assure you that, even now, support for Donald Trump runs high in the agrarian communities of America.
To paraphrase comedian Sarah Silverman on this situation, you don’t have to like the liar to have compassion for the lied-to. And few have been lied to more than rural populations about what Donald Trump is supposedly doing for them.
Trump’s Policies Have Been An Economic Disaster For Farmers And Agricultural Economies
Back in 2017, Donald Trump told a fawning audience in Iowa, “We will rebuild rural America.” That same year, his budget blueprint called for a 21 percent cut to the Agriculture Department, including cuts to rural infrastructure spending, a bar on a popular bipartisan program that buys farmers’ crops to send them abroad as food aid to some 2.2 million people in need, and the elimination of the Rural Business and Cooperative Service loan initiative.
Also in 2017, China imported $19.5 billion worth of U.S. farm goods. However, as Trump ramped up his trade war with China, U.S. agricultural exports slumped. In 2018, American farmers exported just $9.2 billion worth of farm goods to China. In August, 2019, in retaliation for Trump’s latest pledge to slap an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports worth $300 billion, China officially canceled all purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
Trump did promise subsidies to farmers to help offset the effects of his trade war. However, most of the subsidies delivered so far have gone to the richest, largest corporate farms, not to mom-and-pop operations. Of the $8.4 billion in payments made to U.S. farmers through the end of April, more than half went to the top 10 percent in the farm economy, the farms that are already the biggest and most successful. According to Department of Agriculture data analyzed by Washington non-profit Environmental Working Group, the top one percent of farm aid recipients received average payments of more than $180,000. The bottom 80 percent got average payments of less than $5,000.
While farmers are a relatively small voting block — only about one percent of the U.S. population — for many rural and quasi-rural communities, farming is the backbone upon which a vast array of other economic activity is supported. Iconic tractor-maker John Deere, for instance, is based in what passes for a city on the Iowa border: Moline, Illinois, population 42,000. This year, John Deere explicitly blamed the trade war when it slashed its full-year profit and sales outlook. Meanwhile, John Deere rival CNH Industrial, registered in the Netherlands with corporate offices in London, has faced similar production slowdowns in its North American market. On the other hand, CNH reported a swollen order book for tractors and combines in its South American Market, particularly in Brazil, which China has turned to instead of the U.S. to fill its demand for soybeans.
By almost any objective measurement, Trump has been bad for farmers and farming economies. According to the chief economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the median U.S. farm income will be -$1,449 this year. Most farmers are working just to lose money. Last week, Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue met the issue with the trademark tact of this administration, telling a room full of Minnesota farmers:
What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.
Classy.
Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren Meets Rural Concerns With Plan For Action
Of course, ask farmers what a Democrat has done for them lately, and they might be as hard-pressed to give you an answer as they would be if you asked them to name one Trump policy that has actually helped them. But at least a number of the Democratic presidential contenders have been making overtures to rural America.
“Trade war by tweet is not working for our farmers,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren in remarks to Iowans this August. When it comes to a concrete plan to build up rural America, she is a standout in the Democratic field (as she is in many other things). Warren’s plan includes breaking up corporate agribusiness monopolies, supporting family farms, and moving away from farm subsidies to instead guaranteeing prices for farm goods that at least match the cost of production. Her plan also includes improvements to education and affordable housing in rural communities, and an $85 billion grant designated to construct broadband networks in rural communities which still lack reliable, high-speed internet access.
Warren’s plan for rural America is untested, and nobody can blame rural Americans for being suspicious of politicians’ promises. But if Elizabeth Warren could implement one-tenth of what her plan calls for in rural America (or even just didn’t actively damage rural America), she would be a hell of a lot better for farmers and the economies they support than Donald Trump.
Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.