When President Trump shoots from the hip, he occasionally shoots himself in the foot. This time, he appears to have winged some of his most loyal supporters.
By tying NAFTA renegotiations to proposed steel and aluminum tariffs on Twitter this morning, Trump shoved the agriculture industry directly into the crossfire. As soon as that trade war starts, another culture war will begin between two Trumpian factions: the union steelworker in the city and the conservative farmer in the country.
Turns out, Trump is extraordinarily bad at picking winners and losers. While aluminum prices have increased by more than 45 percent in the last two and a half years, the agriculture industry is in a tough spot. Grain prices are plummeting. Land values are stagnating. Farm debt is piling up.
“U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics indicate that while farm income has been cut nearly in half in the past four years,” Ted Genoways wrote in the Washington Post last October, “farm debt has increased by more than a quarter — with projections that it could surpass $390 billion in 2017, the highest level since the farm crisis in the 1980s.”
But Trump can’t see that agriculture malaise from Mar-a-Lago or Manhattan. And his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has certainly spent too much time with his head buried in the sand at the University of California, Irvine to understand. Leave the coasts, though, and it’s obvious that farmers in flyover country are trying to stave off a financial nosedive.
By betting 2.2-million farms on protectionist policies designed to shelter an estimated 140,000 U.S. steelworkers from competition, it’s about to get much, much worse. The local farmer doesn’t just sell his harvest at the local grain elevator anymore. He makes his money in the global economy — and specifically in markets that NAFTA opened.
Canada imported $20.3 billion worth of U.S. crops in 2016, according to Department of Agriculture data, accounting for 15.7 percent of total agricultural exports and making it the number one ag trade partner. Mexico wasn’t far behind, importing 13.6 percent of our exported crop at $17.7 billion.
For Trump to get tough on steel and aluminum tariffs by holding NAFTA hostage means he is pushing those countries to other markets and squeezing agriculture in the process. Canada will look for cheaper soybeans from Argentina instead of Indiana. Mexico will search for less expensive corn from Brazil instead of Iowa.
And farmers won’t forget. When the bank man comes for the land, they will curse the Republican president who started the political drought. The ones who survive, probably by mortgaging more of their estate and their children’s future, won’t be much better off. They will also swear, maybe under their breath, at the increased cost of bailers and combines, backhoes and pickup trucks thanks to the increased price of steel.
What will this gain Trump and his Republicans? Mortgaging NAFTA won’t reopen the steel mills in the rustbelt. It will only slow the decay in blue cities and states, maybe winning over a few union bosses. Worse still, Trump risks alienating most of rural America — voters who have a more in common with the Republican view of government debt, health care, and entitlement reform than the steel union bosses who reliably voted Democrat until now.
It’s difficult to see how Trump and Navarro are doing anything besides selling out the farmer and salting the electoral field. Come 2020 and maybe even earlier in 2018, there may or may not be rain on the scarecrow in places like Indiana and Iowa, but there will definitely be Republican blood on the plow.
