President Trump bet the national farm on protectionist policies, lost it in a trade war, then pushed a New Deal solution to a crisis created by his own #MAGAnomics.
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday a proposed $12 billion bailout for farmers caught in the crossfire of the trade war with China. It requires dusting off a Depression-era program, something called the Commodity Credit Corporation, to subsidize the farmers and ranchers it just crippled. It would plow under every last conservative principle it once held dear.
Not long ago, Republicans identified themselves as the enemies of big government. It is ironic then that they want to resurrect the CCC, a program pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If they go along with the president’s plan, the party of limited government will be breathing new life into a long dormant bureaucracy.
[Related: Farm groups praise $12 billion aid package, urge pullback on trade fights]
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue insists that the payments are a one-time deal meant to allow flexibility for Trump at the global negotiation table. Republicans shouldn’t buy it, and Republicans should dig deep to remember that, as Milton Friedman warned, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Trump would be creating a new form of agricultural welfare. Even worse, Trump would salt the earth effectively ending any debate on reforms of farm subsidies before they begin.
Those effects would be gradual, while the hypocritical cronyism would be immediate. Trump wants the money flowing by Labor Day at the latest — no doubt in an effort to smooth things over with red electorates in soybean-producing states like Missouri and Indiana where Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly are pointing to trade war casualties as a reason to save their vulnerable seats.
This sort of thing is clearly corrupt. Just ask Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark.
Republicans threw a fit when former President Barack Obama directed the CCC to spend $348 million to buy cheap cotton, rice, and soybeans in the South ahead of the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans like Boozman accused the Obama administration of attempting to shore up futures markets and thereby bailout his opponent, then-Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.
Republicans wouldn’t just be embracing what they so recently condemned. They would be responsible for redefining the relationship between the state and agriculture far beyond even what Obama imagined.
[Opinion: American farmers are the real losers of Trump’s trade war]
Government has already been inextricably spliced into the DNA of agriculture. Cutting another check only makes the agrarian industry more dependent on the federal dole, speeding up the transformation of corporate and family farms into modern, feudal charges. Dramatic? Maybe. Problematic? Absolutely. Payments erode the dignity of the farmers who want to get back to the business of feeding the whole world, not waiting by the mailbox for a check.
Firing up bureaucracy to save agriculture from a problem government created in the first place makes about as much sense as paying farmers to torch their crops or to dig then refill holes throughout their fields. Both are as destructive and as pointless as the current trade war. Republicans used to understand these things.
