The undeducated "farmer class" cares much more for their rascism than they do about their own pocketbooks. Even were Trump's policies to cause them to lose their farms to agribusiness corporations and banking thieves, the farmer class' ingrained rascist hate would trump (pun intended) their own economic welfare.
Such is the power of rascist hate combined with ignorance.
35
Ever wonder why so many farmers turned to Trump in the first place? After all, from the 1880s on, the Mid-West and South were hotbeds of radical reform. Witness the Wisconsin Idea, La Follette Progressives, the Grange movement in the Dakotas; heck, Lyndon Johnson was a product of rural Texas!
Well, Wall Street ruined the family farm under Volcker, initiating a generation-long depression in rural America. Independent farmers didn't have a chance.
Then, under the Democrat Clinton, the Neo-liberals were put in charge and made sure that when the dust finally settled, agribusiness was firmly in charge.
Rural America woke up to find that its way of life under threat and the metropolitan elites out to banish them from political and cultural power. Betrayed by the Republicans, abandoned by the Democrats, who seemed to prefer illegal immigrants to law-abiding Americans, they found in Trump their only alternative.
Fortunately, it's not too late - if Democrats can demonstrate that they care more about farmers than financiers, workers more than corporate executives.
Keep calling farmers racist hicks however, as Paul does, and the Republicans will thank you, and the Democrats can kiss the Senate good-bye in 2020.
19
Oh, please. In the first place, this “I want capitalism until it does what it does,” jazz is really, really silly.
And second: what Krugman points out is that farmers are getting smacked by Trump’s tariffs because farmers have been selling more and more to other countries. Those pesky “neoliberals,” and their encouraging of expanded business.
Agribusiness, sure. But those aren’t lib’rul. They’re part of the natural way that capitalism moves aggressively to create bigger and bigger corporations—and the only people who’ve done jack to oppose that are the lefties and progressives you’re yelling at.
55
You make endless accusations that aren’t based in realty. Paul didn’t call farmers racist hicks. No matter how much you want to believe it.
32
Dear Rural Voter,
Many of you believe that metropolitan elites look down on you. Think they are better than you. As someone who grew up poor in rural Illinois and detasseled at 5AM every summer morning starting in sixth grade and now works in a bank in downtown Chicago making six figures there is one thing that I can absolutely, 100% assure you of, and that is that the people of cities and coastal areas do not look down upon you or think they are better than you.
The truth is we don't even think about you really at all. You toil in obscurity. This may shock you but you are not the center of our universe. We don't talk about you and snicker behind your back. We are going about our daily lives. I assume just as you are. When you do come up in conversation it is because you do things that we try to understand. Like why would you vote for someone who clearly is trying to bankrupt you? We can't understand how someone dependent on government then votes for someone to shrink said government. Not because we are better than you but because we literally don't understand it because it isn't rationale or sane.
151
Maybe all those Iowa farmers think Trump will turn out to be, in the end, like the fraudulent protagonist in The Music Man. But Melania is a pretty far cry from Marian the librarian.
16
To all the Trump supporters that are getting hurt "bigly" by Trump but still support him to this day.....
Sorry, you cannot fix stupid if there is willful ignorance and no desire to know facts.
Make America Great Again was code for let's reverse all societal and global economic changes made in the past 50 years.
You may not like immigrants and refugees coming to these shores- but electing Trump will speed up climate change and make global refugees much, much more of an issue as vast land masses will be uninhabitable due to drought or being underwater.
Your idea that Trump can do anything helpful for this country is totally false.
He actually hates this country and is doing everything to destroy it environmentally, socially, economically and politically.
If you don't know this- try getting your news from somewhere other than Fox News.
52
That second paragraph describes him. That explains much.
4
Farmers, Midwest, etc. aren’t dumb....but they are behaving as such. Wake up. Trump is not a conservative, nor does he hold true to the values of conservative voters. He’s in it for himself and that’s it.
Also: “Real America” is letting their racist (read: complete ignorance about other cultures) attitudes get in their own way.
Get a real republican into the primaries and and help rid ourselves of Donald Trump.
17
PK forgot to mention that farmers are now receiving generous government payments intended to offset the decline in their businesses due to the trade war.
Down here in NC, the local TV stations deploy reporters out to the hinterlands to see how farmers are faring. They predictably complain and grouse, but then they mention that Trump is "looking after them" with subsidies to tide them over until China gives in.
This is taxpayer dollars, mind you, shifted from other programs and designed solely to persuade farmers to stick with Trump, which they will.
Bribes, in other words.
483
My my my ! That's redistribution of wealth . You mean these farmers like socialism ?
141
@PaulB67......actually it is called socialism. Something Republicans accuse Democrats of all the time when Democrats propose anything that might actually help people. Shameful hypocrisy.
123
A real estate developer, oft times bankrupt cheater and reality show (cancelled) host and ....... farmers ? What an unlikely alliance.
“ I love farmers, I love Iowa, I think I’ll buy a farm here, that would be nice” shades of the “music man” !
and not unknown in American history. Plus the religious mix and hypocrisy. History repeats itself and the
cruel and nefarious flimflam conman steals from the incredulous and hopeful.
Vote him out, clean out the White House. Elect new senators and use your farming smarts to repel would be magicians, they are not reliable!
They will steal from you, they see you as a target to enrich themselves and their buddies.
24
This is an unsophisticated take on the issue...Painting Iowa farmers like they’re klansmen!?...Most Iowa farmers hire immigrant labor and respect them...Even T Friedman acknowledges that Trump has the right idea when it comes to China...So patriotic Iowa farmers seem willing to suffer in the short term in the hopes that trade w China might be improved in the long run...There’s something admirable about that...But that’s beyond the ken of a NYC elite...and yes I believe Iowa farmers are more “real” Americans than NYC writers...like me...
1
some might realize it, but they’ll never admit it, especially publicly, and especially especially when they’re hanging out at the coop, and the majority of them will more than likely double down, because you know, liberals are evil socialists, even though farmers are the biggest beneficiaries of socialist largesse in the country, they absolutely expect everyone to bend over backward five or six times to satisfy their weird sense of superiority/victim-hood, while simultaneously have contempt for everyone who’s not them, even though if you as your average city dweller what they think about farmers they won’t have a bad word to say, and yet farmers think city people are their enemy, so how do we explain this disconnect...
19
Mr. Krugman is seldom so tone deaf but certainly this time. Read, or reread “Heartland” by Sarah Smersh and rethink both the motivation of farmers and your attitude towards them. This kind of thing builds voters for Trump.
4
Ignorance seems to be the excuse du jour when it comes to the Trump.
8
How farmers ever voted for a New York City loudmouth who spends three hours a day doing his hair and makeup is beyond me.
43
Racism got the farmer's votes not economics.
14
"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."
Answers: No, No & No.
8
Rural folks tend to blame others for their problems. In their minds, urban democrats are to blame for everything.
17
Mark Twain once said: It's easier to fool someone than it is to prove to that someone that he/she has been fooled.
31
These people do not know their produce goes around the world including a country that has a population over 3 billion. How can they be so clueless? It seems their soon-to-be-repo F250s, Silverados, and giant Rams will not make them any wiser. They are like those in the Rust Belt who suddenly got health care and health centers and have no idea that is part of Obamacare. That rally photo is frighteningly similar to the rally photos circa McCain/Romney campaigns. The absence of color is blinding.
19
Who you vote for reveals what you think is going to happen. Farmers, like many voters in 2016, believed Mrs Clinton would ignore the needs of rural areas. Trump, the biggest liar in American history, played 'em like a bad french horn and most farmers bought into it. Now, even after they have been played for the hayseeds Republicans see them as, the farm community can't let go of their addiction to the Republican Party. They brought the disaster many farmers pulled down on themselves. Sorry folks, the GOP likes factory farms and really will never help you out of the pit you willingly walked into. And so it goes.
28
Once more we read the trope that Trump's supporters are his greatest victims. If this is true, why are they still supporting him? Just several days ago, this newspaper reported that their support for his presidency remains solid. Oh, they don't mind getting the multi billion dollar handout he gave them - because they're white, so it's really not "welfare".
But we would be wrong to say that Trump voters are hoodwinked. That they were conned by Trump. In fact, they've gotten exactly what they wanted out of this "president" - a full blown racist who hates brown-skinned people as much as they do.
Trump voters will see their children fall ill because they can't afford their medical treatment - and they'll stay with Trump. Trump voters will never be able to afford higher education - but that's okay, because all the education they say they need are Trump's lies. And Trump voters will stand in soup lines for this man - as long as he tells them that as whites, they are the only "real" Americans.
We need to understand who Trump voters really are. They are people who would go hungry, as long as their "president" orders Hispanic infants into internment camps. This is the deal they wanted, and Trump has delivered. They aren't voting against their "interests" - racism is their interest. And they will do literally anything for this man, as long as he continues to make good on his part of the bargain.
298
@Jackson Curtis
You nailed it!
43
I've come to believe that part of the reason for this refusal to believe that they have been had, not only in farmers but in most of the suffering rural white areas, where drugs and unemployment are rampant, and there are no illegal migrants for thousands of miles, is simple embarrassment. It's very difficult to admit that you've been had, that you're one of the suckers born every minute. So you cling to the idea that you'll soon be proved right in your faith, if you just wait. It's a little like the people who believe that the world is going to end on a certain date. They're assembled, and it doesn't happen, and even then the fraudster says, "Oh wait, so my calendar is a little off. But next week, no doubt, the end will come!" Next week, many of the faithful will be back.
140
The working man, the laborer, the farmer, the one's that 'work the land' have always been tools for politicians. In Germany the expression is "aus echtem Schrot und Korn sein", a phrase used to define toughness and authenticity, a complement.
Trump is imprinting this notion onto rural America. Yes, you are suffering but you have always borne the burden.
Farmers believing this are fools.
6
I keep hearing the farmers complain that they are losing their export markets. Because of The guy they elected. But they still love him.
Meanwhile they keep spewing their bile at fellow Americans daily. They hate women, gays, they're xenophobic, religious bigots.
When are they going to realize they have lost AMERICAN MARKETS? Our support for them is gone. Our support for farm aid, disaster aid any aid.
Any good will from fellow Americans is gone. Lost to the HATRED THEY SPEW AND ELECT.
10
Typical Americans: subsidize the farmer/corporations, subsidize the transportation, processing and delivery, subsidize the whining to the tune of hundreds of billions and blame it all on the black or brown person when the lie is exposed.
And you still believe him because of those ‘coastal elites’.
Your media plays this and the polity like a fiddle in a firestorm!
7
Farmers were doing great in China, but Trump has, astonishingly, convinced them to fight Wall Street's battle. That's the biggest con here. But they also get attacks on kneeling football players and transsexuals, so I guess that's all they really want.
BTW, I hope that they're not expecting Wall Street to reciprocate support someday. They might be disappointed.
7
"But they have, in fact, been had, and they may finally be starting to realize it." Really? Let's see the evidence. Racism and xenophobia are pretty powerful.
"Sure, your farm's going under. But, quick, look over here! Baby in a cage!"
6
Before I read your article, how do you communicate the contradiction in thinking to these True Believers in their green hats, why would you vote for someone who rips you off? Why do you believe all the lies Trump throws at you? Why do you fall for Trump's con job?
Even John Kasich-- who don't be fooled-- is not labor friendly can't figure it all out when he talks to these people.
4
"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."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No, they do not understand. Go to any rural gas station, mom & pop restaurant, any place where folks gather and talk and you'll hear fox "news" on the TV or the drug addict known as "Rush" on the radio.
They simply do not know any better because their choice of news and information lies to them, misleads them and misinforms them. trump knows this and that is how he survives.
Willful ignorance and simple racism. Besides, these are the golden years for large corporate farms ... they're able to pick up fertile farm lands cheap because of farmer bankruptcies.
Follow that money and you'll see huge corporate payoffs to thr trump crime family.
15
Supporting Trump will cause American farmers to lose their customer to Canadian and South American farmers, and they won't be getting that market back. It is gone for good. Self inflicted misery. Please don't come to the American taxpayer for a bailout with your "poor me" story.
PS:
I grew up on a farm/ranch
13
I’ve never heard the term “affinity fraud” (but I like it), but consider that “con man” is short for “confidence man;” i.e., someone who gains the confidence of his “mark” to perpetrate his fraud. So, besides being a grifter and a racist, Trump is the embodiment of the term, “con man.”
But the most baffling part of farmers’ majority support of Trump, even at this late date, is that they someone see (and saw) him as “one of them.” Say what? You mentioned their (supposedly) shared contempt for “urban elites.” That’s true, but only to the extent that Trump harbors contempt for EVERYBODY who isn’t ultra-rich, white, male, racist, misogynistic, jingoistic, authoritarian...am I leaving anything out? Oh, yeah; and they have to genuflect and praise him constantly. He’s been that way his entire life. Taking advantage of farmers, including making jokes at their expense, isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
6
Hard to feel bad for 'em, you bought a cure for your athlete's foot from señor snake oil over there because he said it'd make it all better, and now, somehow, it's gangrenous.
The only good I foresee coming from this is: we aren't wastefully shipping bags/ boxes/ shipping containers of fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats across the world, what a complete waste of the country's dwindling topsoil, our planet's atmosphere, and our precious clean water all so we can feed another country that's unwilling or unable to feed itself, we're willing to cannibalize ourselves for that?
Our priorities are a joke and America's farmers certainly don't have any, as evidenced by their vote and support for this imbecile.
4
Trump to his base: "Are you going to believe me, or your own lying eyes."
128
"And you know nothing good ever last so go on and kiss it goodbye, cause the sun setting fast " an old country song.
1
“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest...”
-Paul Simon
8
There are dairy farmers who would be in trouble if anyone checked the citizenship of their employees. Maybe even the Nunes clan.
6
Someone should tell them.
5
I have no sympathy for these farmers. If their support for Trump is predicated on his keeping America white and disenfranchising brown people, they deserve the pain they brought on themselves. If they lose their heritage farms to big conglomerates, well, MAGA, y’all.
9
America is not a country. America is a continent comprised of many diverse countries.
4
One big neo-liberal election strategy is to collect return voters from those that switched from Hillary to Trump in the 2016 presidential election. So their tactic is to call Trump and associates racist, white supremacist, nationalists, and bigots as many times as possible in media across this nation. One need only point to this article. It also is the stupidest political idea ever foisted upon the electorate; it lives or dies only when it is nurtured by its own nature, that is to say, propaganda. And this money eating tactic is going to fail, miserably, and instead practically guarantee many new Trump voters in 2020, as well as usher his second term as president. It loses even more steam politically because it is as cynical perspective on the psychology of voters and voting. The Nobel Prize does not a psychologist make.
2
How farmers in rural America see themselves as being like Trump is truly baffling. He was born in a major metropolitan/urban area. They were not. He has never lived in a rural area. He was born into millions. They likely were not. He went to private schools. They likely did not. He went to college and post graduate business school. They likely did not. He is not a devout religious person (remember "two Corinthians"?) nor has he exhibited the moral sentiments and character that might accompany someone of faith. Ostensibly many of them are and do.
So what are the rest of us metropolitan/urban heathens missing? He is NOT like you. So stop pretending that he is your champion against the city-folk you are so convinced are your problem. He IS the city-folk you claim to despise. In every sense. You say you don't want to be called 'stupid'. No one does. But it's hard for the rest of us who can and do see this con man for what he is to understand why you ignore the obvious fact that he is playing you. That he is telling you what you want to hear but is only hurting you economically.
It's right in his ghost written book the Art of the Deal. "I play to people's fantasies". Translation, he lies to people so he can get what he wants. He's lied to you to get your vote but for some reason you refuse to see/believe it. I'm not sure what you call that but it sure ain't smart.
12
US farmers are the financially well off uneducated base that supports Trump and will vote for him!
2
I am reminded of a tv interview I saw with a south Texas farmer who would lose half his farm to Trump’s wall but still supported Trump and was willing to pay the price to “MAGA”..
5
In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, "You can fool some of the people all of the time."
4
The problem with (most) farmers and ranchers is that they have this notion that because they work long, hard hours that they are entitled. Entitled to cheap water (state water laws), cheap power (federally funded), federal subsidies (myriad types), cheap transportation (federal funding of Army Corps projects), cheap grazing rates (on federal lands) with zero responsibility to protect public waters and public lands. They pollute with impunity. Yet they have this absurd notion that the government is against them and that they have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's hard to muster sympathy for people who are so out of touch with reality and so disinterested in the better good and, even, of their own good.
1907
@West Coast
All that may be true (and I think it is--and true for loggers, oil drillers, miners, frackers, and other industrial and ag sectors, too), but how does that explain why many large scale farmers and small farmers think they are well served by Trump's trade war?
189
@Michael
" but how does that explain why many large scale farmers and small farmers think they are well served by Trump's trade war?"
When you figure that out, let me know. As far as I can tell, 1/3 of our countrymen suffer from serious cognitive dissonance.
Do you remember Karl Rove's famous quote..."We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality"
359
@Loyd Collins
Thanks for the reminder of Rove's quote (which Kafka, Orwell and Jorge Luis Borges all predicted, but I suspect all would not have appreciated....).
131
“'What do you call two farmers in a basement?' he snarked. 'A whine cellar.'”
Another farm country joke:
Q: Why are farmers buried 6 inches under, instead of 6 feet under?
A: So they keep grasping their farm welfare entitlement checks.
It's hard to sympathize with people who live off welfare while disparaging others who also take some.
Farmers get special tax breaks and special bankruptcy protections Farmers get special subsidies for power, internet access, water, and business (farm) loans, all while mocking those in the cities who struggle without them.
And farmers want real Americans to feel sorry for them? Really?
Don't think so.
14
Isn't that thought "...let the will to believe override their judgment." the foundation of religion? This president is Elmer Gantry.
2
Turns out that bigotry is more important than livelihood for some people.
1
I read this solely to find out why the headline is “frauding” instead of “defrauding.” I am none the wiser having finished.
What’s going on here? Is just for alliteration?
Back in 2016 I remember seeing a reporter with another news organization interview Trump supporters in a small, struggling town, asking them why they liked this wealthy man from New York. One of them — a guy in a one-piece mechanic’s suit, with his name embroidered over his heart — said he liked Trump because “he is just like me.” So the affinity fraud is real. Lord, what fools these mortals be.
12
Trump is a fraud alright. He doesn't have a plan. He has a lot of half baked opinions on how to win a trade war. Or fix immigration or the role for a president.
Trump assumes that the farmers are his lackeys like the
GOP. We will see.
1
Paul, surely it is not lost on you that your tone is just that of another urban elitist telling farmers how dumb they are. They'll not "finally come around" as long as this is this message from the left. Why not illuminate the politicians who actually have plans to relieve their distress and improve their lives?
3
Having hoed beets and worked on a railroad section gang beside workers from Mexico, I can testify to their ability to work hard, have integrity, have love of and support of family and generally exhibit those qualities of being essential to a great nation. And oh, when did the press focus in on how Trump and his ilk actually defined "Make America Great Again"? The beet farmers and friends and family I know are diverse with some thoughtful and insightful while others are not. It may be dawning on many that they bought a pig in a poke but generally they will continue to be in denial because they buy into the clichés and shallow assertions the conservative media feeds them.
178
Well said, sir.
10
Yeah, wheat, what's wheat compared to the yummy feeling of eating your car? And farmers? What are they but patsies to be praised and ignored and bribed like common yokels, the kind that buy trump products and keep him 'tremendously' wealthy?
What's your wheat compared to his wealth anyway?
Keep it coming, trump, your mouth will sink you.
2
Dr. Krugman, Today in a tweet criticising another Trump used three words that he must have learned about himself - horrible, corrupt, fraudulent !
Surely Donald trump is a “coastal elite”. Why is he exempt from the scorn of farmers and mid-westerners ?
2
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap...."
1
For the farmers, believing in Donald is a religious experience, that they have finally found a white "Messiah" who will 'stand the ground" for them to protect their rights to own the land, maintain their life style (not to be overwhelmed by "non-white invaders") and grow their crops.
It is they against all those un-Americans living in the big cities (although that's Donald himself) who believe in diversity, gender equality (who work on the farm more, man or woman?), welcome new immigrants, and promote same sex marriage.
It's their "American Value" against the world, and nothing feels good unless it is MAGA...
Selling crops to Chinese is not a problem since Donald will win and beat Chinese government to submission...
Sonny Perdue's Whine Cellar comment was quite a slap in the face to our farmers. If that lack of empathy isn't enough to end farmers support of Trump's Administration and it's failed policies...I don't know what is. Farmers would not be behind Trump at all...if the Gov't had not subsidized them with our tax dollars. Mexico did not pay for the Wall..Kim Jung Un did not denuclearize..and the trade War has not worked out. Why would any American support an Administration with so many failed policies ?? With all the hirings,firings,resignations,indictments,convictions, and general chaos and confusion...if the Trump Administration were a business...he would be considered an inept business man. Of course he's using our tax money..so he doesn't care about any of our...Whining !! What are Trump's supporters supporting? Failed policies? MAGA?? I can't see it...can you?
6
Dear farmers: elections have consequences. You supported and voted for a multiple bankrupt, serial philanderer, who obviously didn't have a clue about economics, governance, foreign or domestic affairs. Live with the results and stop complaining.
9
I can't understand why rural, small-town people think a guy who lives in a gold penthouse on 5th Ave. is just like them.
8
Prof. Krugman has written an excellent analysis. It seems the farmers felt that Trump shares their "values". But why would a sane person believe that a con man with three bankruptcies and three divorces and a string of affairs, many of them during his three marriages, has any values? Haven't they been duped by a big city snake oil peddler? First he fools them how they share values (!?), then he bankrupts them, then they love him even more. Their gullibility is surreal.
8
Russia is taking over supplying China with what our farmers used to supply.
I have nothing but respect for farmers and their chosen lifestyles. Heck, all my relatives live in Iowa. However, I am extremely saddened by their continued support for this administration. I believe their support is actually contributing to the destruction of this country. How ironic that the first casualties are the biggest supporters. Sorry, no sympathy from me.
4
"He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
Umm, I don't think they're just imagining that, when this article indulges in such patronizing twaddle as "told by politicians to think of themselves" and "they may finally be starting to realize it."
30
Fact is, Iowa votes Republican. Just because some are democrats does not mean that most are not, and it does not seem right that so few have such a big say in our government.
Even worse for the FOUR senators from north and south dakota. What a load of malarkey that so few people have 4 senate votes. NOT representative government!!
5
Please correct me if I am wrong, but did the trouble with migrants start when the US enacted a farm bill that made it cheaper for foreign countries to buy imported US grain than their own, locally-grown crops? Many foreign workers then started growing cocaine, or lost their farms altogether, and have been emigrating to the US.
2
“Deer Hunting With Jesus” is an entertaining book that examines the strange reality of poor white working class voting republican against their own self interest. It is a direct parallel to the Iowa farmers being their own enemies politically. Funny, good read.
2
Creating a caricature of farmers as red-hat wearing racist mouth breathers easily skips over the fact that the choice was between Trump and Clinton. Coming from the Democratic party were regulations to further burden agriculture-Waters of the US is one example, it would require a permit process for every single drainage ditch placed in every field every year. Not year round waterways, but the little 6" deep ones that are seasonal. When faced with ridiculously petty rules like this, Trump seems the obvious choice despite his failings.
"Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
This. Right here. Gets me every time. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, bailed out by Daddy, inherited millions -- and they believe Trump isn't an elite who looks down on them? I just don't get it.
4
Let's see, ... vegetable grower, does not receive subsidies, 'local' markets, immigrant wife, PhD, quaker, no debt, frugal, environmentally aware. I'm doing OK. Maybe I'll buy my neighbor's land after the coming big crash.
5
Truckers, farmers, miners, factory workers did you do much golfing this year? Because if you were not hanging out at a hermetically sealed Trump property, then you are simply seen in the abstract ( a gullible voting block) for this president
Asked what your average work day is like and he hasn’t a clue.
Oh, and I don’t mean to single you out.. He has no clue what any average wage earning, tax paying citizen does. He pretends to like you, but I doubt he would even let you touch him.
Trump know three things: White, Money, Privilege. He will get all of that, but only if you vote for him.
7
I hope Paul Krugman is right, that farmers will soon realize that they've been conned, and that the "affinity" they felt with trumpian/Republican hostility toward immigrants and foreigners actually masks deep contempt. After all, there is no one more bumpkin, crude, and ignorant than the charlatan from Manhattan.
1
I’m from the boondocks originally and have always been a card-carrying, knee-jerk liberal and proud of it. But I don’t consider the sillier stuff arising from professors at elite universities or the Arts section of the Times to be part of liberalism as I know it, just aberrational nonsense. Liberalism is to me the legacy of the New Deal, etc. Unfortunately back in the boondocks the silly stuff is regarded as the actual essence of liberalism, and the Democratic Party seems unable to communicate otherwise. The Party is mired in a misguided program of pandering to identity groups in order to garner their votes, and inevitably misses the big picture.
6
A superb commentary that leads me to a suggestion for Tom Steyer: Rather than spend your millions on running for president, I suggest you buy up as many billboards as you can in Iowa and elsewhere across the midwest. Then place what Dr. Krugman so aptly highlights here on each and every one of them -
"According to a White House transcript, Trump complained that while Japan sends us millions of cars, “We send them wheat. Wheat. (Laughter.)”
4
Paul, shame on you and the the NYTimes for once again polarizing the discussion between some imaginary coastal elites and the awe gee shucks ignorant farmer. I have growing angst with The Gray Lady for this one huge reason. This is about trade relations with China. Stop using polemic over-generalizing to just level some more tiresome criticism at Trump. Like that’s new and interesting and anyone cares anymore. If you read any ag media anywhere it is writ large that most farmers believe we need to make this sacrifice to fix a broken system. Start talking with a variety of the people you are writing about. Trump is just the person who had either the naïveté to start this and/or really cares about his base. The constant whiny criticism from this quarter should at least be based on well researched perspectives.
Oh and how funny is it that you are indirectly defending the Chinese from these pages ehh. Too ironic.
3
Farmers wear meany hats- seed sower, rain shaman, accountant, trader, mechanic, chemist, patriot, truck driver... Farmers are smart. Have you ever tried to back up a trailer? When you need to move a sofa upstairs, call a farmer. Trump is the kind of guy that has never lifted a sofa. Would never consider it. This makes him a bizarre standard barer for their cause. With such irrefutable evidence of being conned, I'm afraid Trump supporting Farmers (there are many that don't support him) are mostly racist.
2
Trump and Purdue making jobs about farmers is insulting.
3
Let the farmers enjoy their candidate!
2
The classical republican fraud- tell poor folks they will get rich, get elected, then share more with only the rich.
6
So we'll arm Japan instead of sending them wheat and funnel the taxes on the war profits back to our farmers and that will keep them voting Republican?
I live and work in a small town in the middle of farming country. On a recent trip to a hardware store that caters to the local farmers, the owner complained about how the trade war was pushing up prices right when farmers are finding it harder to sell their crops. He was ready for a change and he said the feeling was general. He was quite clear that the tariffs were coming out of their own pockets - he had to redo prices on all his merchandise every time the tariffs got pushed up. But he said he voted for Trump "who didn't know where Aleppo was" because he was swayed by the allegations against Hillary Clinton about the emails and didn't want to see Bill Clinton back in the White House. A lot will depend on who is offered as the Democratic candidate this time around and what slander is used against him or her. You may see more votes for 3rd party candidates as people try to avoid voting for Trump but can't accept the Democratic candidate either. Unfortunately, the more polarized the parties become, the more each will represent an extreme rather than a center that could be rallied around.
220
@KJH - Amazing what a determined program of character assassination aimed at a person for over a quarter of a century can do, isn't it? None of these people can point to anything more than "allegations" about Hillary but with a little bit of effort they could have found out a lot more about Donald and how what he was claiming about himself did not match reality. Now, we're supposed to choose the next candidate to make the same group of people happy without regard to anything other than what they want? Just what is so extreme about most of the Democratic candidates? Do you actually know who is running and what they stand for or do you mostly just believe what right-wing media tell you?
66
And big agriculture will scoop up the land at bargain prices.
7
Raise your hand if your entire livelihood depends on a stable climate. One in which rains come in the Spring, but not too heavily, snow cover dwindles at the appropriate time, soils don't freeze after you've already planted them, air doesn't drop below freezing after blossoming, the summer air cools off at night just enough for your plants to recover from the days heat, and shots of gentle rain will replenish your reservoirs and aquifers at just the right time.
Of those of you who raised your hand, raise the other one if you think Trumps weakening of greenhouse gas emission laws is a good idea.
Those of you with both hands raised, I've got just four words for you: This Is A Stickup.
415
@Phil
Brilliant. A template for Dems talking to voters.
I hope people reading this pass it along to their nearby Democratic candidates.
32
Age 69. Grew up in rural Wisconsin. Town pop'n: 450.
All the surrounding farmers I knew were evangelicals.
They believe. Done. Over.
No need to further explain.
366
@LynnBob
Also 69, but I don't remember so many "pastors" getting involved with directing people how to vote (maybe because I grew up in the NE). Agree that "belief" seems to trump any evidence to the contrary.
43
I understand Professor Krugman’s analysis. But I cannot get my head around how farmers thought/still think that Trump is one if them. He is a New York City billionaire who obtained his riches from his daddy and never did an honest day’s work in his life. He also has no clue about many things, but certainly no clue about farming. And yet they think he’s their guy. I just don’t get it.
1348
@Ted
Its because of the way he talks. He is sort of crude and sort of a braggart and is critical of things farmers don't like either.
109
@Ted, for entirely different reasons, Trump despises the same liberal-progressive establishment types of people that farmers despise as not real-life folks. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," even if he lives a very different lifestyle.
Farmers don't admire Trump, his politics, his character, his (lack of) ethics, his golf games and resorts. They simply wanted those alien "elites" out of the White House and the headlines in their newspapers. They are getting what they wanted, and I suspect they are sufficiently amused by Trump's bullying of people who, farmers think, look down on rural people to vote him another term.
155
@Ted watch "The Loudest Voice". Its not only Trump. He echos a very large, semi coordinated Media backlash.
30
Yes, a family owned farm in Iowa is "real America", but a much smaller part than it used to be. Most of real America now is in Queens and Oakland, Ca, Miami, Houston, Madison, Wi and Bend, Or. Sorry, folks, the only constant is change.
1
So, hypothetically, Trump gets reelected.....bear with me a second.....then all these other places American farmers sell to will all simply say...OK, stability is back. We will go back to buying agricultural products from the reliable, even handed, predictible Americans. The market for soybeans and corn will take off. Why would any country that took it's business elsewhere in the current environment backtrack? With the same impulsive, angry, erratic, and lying guy at the top? So you farmers out there. By all means vote for him a second time. After all, you did the first time thinking "What could go wrong". And after 2 1/2 years you are just beginning to realize that the answer to "What could go wrong" is....quite a bit actually. And tell me, for you, this is so much better than Obama? What you wanted all along was to have your sales cut in half and your workers pulled off your farm? At some pointed you traded in your red hat for brown stained pants.
10
As to the racism of American farmers, it doesn't stop them from knowingly hire illegals. But then again, Americans refuse to work that hard so the illegal are the only people who are willing to plow the land, farm the crops and harvest them. The reality of the modern day Republicans is that they are white, "christian" racists and misogynists. Who on one hand condemn anyone who is getting Government aid when they themself get huge amount of government aid.
8
In my state, plenty of farm-country people voted for Trump. Krugman seems to think they were bamboozled. Au contraire. They knew precisely what they were going to get. It's what they wanted. Their only mistake was thinking it would cost them a nickel, instead of tens of thousands. It seemed like a good deal at the time.
A year ago, the rural NPR operation held a round table in Colfax, WA. The subject was tariffs and the effect on farm commodities. Participant after participant said it was inconvenient, but nearly every one added, "but we've got to secure our borders!" That meant the border for Brown People, to the south. Colfax WA is less than 200 miles from the Canadian border, but those farmers acted like the Red Army was nearly here. It wasn't about Canadians.
There are a lot of people in America who will give up good economic outcomes, if they can make sure the Brown dude down the road is worse off than he is. Or the queer one. This is what Trump does for those people. It's war with them. Religious war. When Jesus demands a little devotion, you don't expect them to worry about the price a bushel of soybeans brings, do you?
The only good news from any of this is that the sophistry is completely destroying the religious right, and the Republican Party is on the brink of cardiac arrest. But like heroin addicts, they just can't stop. Sure we suffer from the crime wave the addicts bring, but what other solution is there but to wait until they've reached rock bottom?
7
A recent column in, as I recall, WaPo posed the interesting rhetorical question - if you were Xi, and seeking to boost China and retard your chief rival for global supremacy, would you a) confront Trump and his tariffs, thereby likely sinking the US economy, or b) appear to knuckle under to some degree in order to prop up US markets and thus attempt to ensure Trump's re-election? Interesting question, isn't it? China is playing long ball, while Trump is one zero-sum transaction at a time.
8
Most urban folk have no understanding of how racist people are in rural America. I grew up in a Midwestern, small town agricultural community. I smelled cow manure on farm kids in the halls of my high school. It is an honest smell. I'm white and never spoke to a black person until I was eighteen years old and in college. Living in cities these last 45 years I've come to appreciate diversity. Many rural people have a chip on their shoulders, reinforced by the lie machine also known as Fox "News". I hope those who voted for the orange disaster are enjoying this train wreck of a presidency. Trump channels the stupidity and bigotry of much of the American population. Sad, I know.
13
The more dangerous affinity of Trump is his stationing of
Ignorant and corrupt people like Sonny Perdue to have
Control over farmers who know more about agriculture
Then he ever will.Trump has the affinity for men and women
Who look down and have no respect for, parts of humanity.
2
Or it might have had something to do with urban elite types talking (and writing) about them as though they’re children, or a different and lesser species.
Professor K should go to a diner in Nebraska, stand up on the counter and explain to them how they’’re all racist dopes. But with lots of psychobabble about how their minds work. I suspect the Trump campaign would be happy to underwrite that
Surely farmers must have known what they were getting in Trump? When he became president in 2016 this "business genius" had compiled a record of 6 bankruptcies, 24 total flops -- Trump Villas, Grenadines; Trump Tower, Tampa, FL; Mississippi Casino; Trump Atlanta; Trump Ocean Resort, Baja; Trump at Cap Cana, Dominican Republic; Trump Financial; Trump Philadelphia; Trump Dubai Tower, United Arab Emirates; Trump on the Ocean; Trump Tower, Batumi, Georgia; Trump Plaza Tower, Israel; GoTrump.com travel booking service; US Pro Golf Tour partnership; Sentient Jet partnership; Running Horse golf, Fresno; Trump animated series; Trump magazine; "Trump Tycoon" mobile app; Trump network; Trump Institute; Trump Steaks by Sharper Image; Trump Office for Staples chairs; Brand licensing in Brazil -- and 16 other money losers -- Trump Waikiki, Hawaii; New tower at Trump Taj Mahal; Trump SoHo; Trump Toronto; Trump Las Vegas; Trump Hollywood; Trump Panama; Trump Chicago; Trump Golf Links, Scotland; Puerto Rico Golf & Residences; US speaking tour; Trump University; Australian speaking tour; Trump Home collection; Trump Vodka; Brand licensing in India. The only thing Trump is actually good at is hype, and one would think that canny country folk suspicious of city slickers would have seen through an obvious grifter.
18
Message to all journalists and pundits: please stop using the word "Trumpian." It's a made-up word that dignifies the president despite any measure of clear, consistent policies.
I'm thinking of the word "Keynesian," a body of economic theory, like it or not, that has driven economic discourse since the 1920s. Trump has no such model, neither for the economy nor for foreign policy.
So please stop with "Trumpian this" and "Trumpian that." Doing so elevates a blow-hard who has no intellectual or theoretical concept underlying anything -- unless it's to undo whatever Obama put in place.
4
Lindsey Graham said they should accept “some pain.”
Hey Lindsey, why don’t you accept some pain and do the right thing for your nation and risk being primaried? But no, you did a 180 on your position about trump. You went for power over ethics and morals.
Hypocrite.
10
Since I am at my best when off-topic, why pretend?
So...here’s what I want covered now that ag industry topic now afoot, in general, in this op-Ed.
Alabaman Koch chicken slaughterhouses recently get raided by 600 ice agents...for immigrant employment violations...one of the biggest raids of its kind...ever...under an Ag Sec whose last name is ...wait for it...Perdue?
Would a Perdue chicken slaughterhouse be subject to same scrutiny anytime soon? Maybe? Any violations there? Nahhh.
I am not a Koch cheerleader, either, but, this targeted raid does not square with me.
The self-service reeks. Badly.
7
It is way past time for farmers (and others) to STOP believing in fraudster drama queen Trump, whose game is your destruction and his opportunism.
4
Farmers "imagine" urban elites look down on them? Funny coming in a column that does nothing but reduce them to idiotic xenophobes. Thank goodness Krugman is here to point the way.
Playing people for fools is what our cozen president does best. When the de-forested amazon crops totally replace ours, the stewards will be replaced the Trumpian land grabbers. Much like the alcohol plants of the 70's were.
3
I'm o.k. with the schadenfreude I feel from the subtitle of this article.
1
Paul Krugman is calling America's farmers "racists". That's ridiculous and insulting.
I noticed liberals love the word "racist". Everyone who voted for Trump is a racist according to liberals.
You missed the grand strategy...bankrupt the liitle farmers, foreclose, and let the megacorps buy up the land. Brilliant!
8
The Farmers who supported Trump knew fully well why they were supporting him. His attempts to dehumanize immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims etc. appealed to their primal instincts.
Yes, they are honest and hardworking unlike the vagabond they supported. But they are also easily swayed by gun toting, and Bible tooting rednecks like Steve King, Chuck Grassley, Roy Moore and Donald Trump. So honestly, I don't feel so sorry that their revenues are being clattered by this trade war.
And this is only the beginning. Other countries in East Asia, Mexico, Canada, Northern Europe etc are very likely to follow China's lead in reducing their dependency on American farming products.
You see, voting for and supporting Trump is like allowing a venomous Cobra into your bedroom. Now it is trying to bite everybody in your house. "Enjoy it".
6
"What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar."
Sonny Purdue, Secretary of Agriculture at the Minnesota FarmFest
1
Seeing a lot of farmism here. “You know how all those farmers are...”
2
Spot on.
1
Trump is a lifelong white welfare queen, mooching money first from his daddy, then mooching from banks, contractors, suppliers and workers on his construction sites by systematically underpaying them and filing for bankruptcy and gifting them with pennies on the dollar...and now mooching money from the US Treasury to fund billionaire welfare programs.
Then Trump ran his unvarnished - but traditional Republican - 'nonwhites are welfare queens and criminals' campaign and warm the cockles of white America's stone cold hearts.
So what if immigrants comprise the vast majority of the American agricultural industry, Donald was their champion Caucasian City Slicker ready to save the country from dark skin.
And as his xenophobic tariffs trashed American agriculture, Donald was right there to hand out special white welfare checks to America's already heavily subsidized white farmer welfare queens.
Remember an important Republican rule:
It's not welfare if a white person takes it.
...and deficits don't matter...unless there's Democratic President.
...and the Constitution is sacred...until we suspend to rig the Supreme Court and disenfranchise Democratic voters to ensure that tyranny of the minority reigns supreme in the land of 'freedom'.
Hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance, and 'fear and loathing' are the shiny family values of the Grand Old Pigmentation party.
Nice GOPeople.
November 3 2020
14
I confess I was a coastal elite who largely viewed flyover country people as uneducated racist fools.
Now Trump has proven that to be a fact
6
Well, just keeping slopping farm subsidies into the proud independent boot strap pulling midwestern farmers' feed trough. Just don't call it welfare.
5
Two words explains it completely, "Fox News!"
4
nailed it as always...…….thank you
3
Former Iowan from farming family. As to the trade war, Trumps main error was in not asking for the help and understanding of the farmers (in this case, but also retailers, tech companies, and other business owners suffering from the tariffs) either before or during the imposition of the tariffs. I am reminded of Winston Churchill after Dunkirk telling his people the truth about the hard road (blood, tears and sweat) it would be to fight and conquer the Nazis. Get the farmer behind your cause and they will chip in with all their might. Instead, DJT has insulted them with subsidies and the callous assumption that they will remain politically loyal, even as their livelihood goes down the drain. Farmers today have plenty of savvy as to economics, trade and accounting to know that it's far better for them and the country to grow and sell than to grow and dump. Politicians today, as with advertisers, think we are all simpletons and chumps but they should remember who the last president was and how successful he was (e.g., solving the financial crisis) when he treated the people as smart. Not all agreed with him but no one could say he treated us as idiots. Disclosure; I guess it's no surprise I'm backing Warren.
5
What do you call a self-pitying narcissist who blames others for his own failures and problems and then suckers others into his pathology by blaming immigrants, minorities, women, the media, competent and patriotic government employees and other countries for the woes of his native land?
The Whine Seller
10
Krugman ignores one social fact-- immigrants are not residents of White farming communities, HOWEVER, migrant workers that are shipped in and out are their veritable life blood. So, just as Farmers are being conned by the con man in the W.H., they con themselves into believing that they can live in a world without cheap, slavish immigrant laborers that work hard and long hours petrified of being sent back to home countries if they fail to help our Great White American Farmers. Sad! Bad for America!
3
Welp. At least they didn't vote for a perverted, selfish, treasonous-
oh.wait, they did
ha ha
2
The farmer's on the dole,
The farmer's on the dole,
High, high, the deficit,
The country's in the hole.
10
"Trump seemed like their kind of guy."
Oh, yeah. How could I have missed it? A spoiled, trust fund billionaire from New York who only sees green when he looks in his wallet or is on the golf course, is just like salt-of-the-earth farmers who work sun up to sun down to put food on their families' tables - and, who probably can't recover from bankruptcy even once. Just alike.
Paul, I remember the first embargo on Russia. The wheat embargo to punish the Soviet Union for the invasion of Afghanistan. The farmers raised holy hell and voted enmasse against Jimmy Carter. And Carter was a farmer!
Despite being a fierce cold warrior - something rural America claimed to support - Ronald Reagan promised to lift the embargo. And won the election with the support of those same farmers who saw their self interest as being more important their chest thumping anti-communism.
The farmers in 1980 said, "The Soviets can't get away with it" - until their livelihood was greatly affected. Let's see how long today's farmers will say the same thing about China.
6
The NYT has one objective. It is not to make anyone's life better. It is to stoke bitterness and division in hopes of getting Trump out of office. Their years long effort to smear Trump with Russia collusion failed miserably despite unimaginable amounts of time and money to destroy the President with OPeds that are now best described as hate filled musings and fake news.
This effort is not working because most non rabidly liberal Americans are sick to death of looking at the tragic failure of liberal policies like the Great Society and being blamed for the failures because they are racist.
Utter hogwash. The NYT, MSM and lefties are purveyors of poisonous efforts to destroy what remains of comity in the country. All in the left's lust for power.
2
Trump has promised to bail out farmers with government assistance (called "welfare" when applied to city folk). Given the ineptitude of the Trump Administration, the implementation of any kind of systematic government help will never happen. However, farmers like Trump sycophants Senators Ernst and Grassley will be rewarded and first at the trough.
Sonny Perdue is such a cut-up. I wonder how his joke went over in a room full of farmers having their worst year in the past 15. Did they whine or did they suck it up for their man Trump?
This term immigrants and farmers. In a second Trump term, Medicare and Social Security recipients.
5
Most farmers are hard working & independent people who can’t be led like a bull with a ring in its nose, but that is what so many are allowing by following Trump. Trump is making fools of them & leading the smaller farmers to bankruptcy. But hey, maybe big agribusiness corporations can buy their land & machinery cheap & they can go work for them at minimum wage.
Wake up farmers! Trump is your enemy, not immigrants or urban elites or intellectuals or globalization. You need them all to survive & thrive. What you don’t need is Trump!
2
You can blame the farmers for their appearance of cognitive dissonance by sticking with Trump now, but they were hurting already under Obama. I was living in Montana 5 years ago when the price of beef on the hoof declined by 50%. Yet the price in the store stayed the same. Middle men were making a bundle. Friends who are farmers were siloing their wheat rather than sell, hoping for better prices.
They have bet on the wrong guy, but nothing has been going well for a long time for them. They have been hurting, losing money, for years.
3
As someone who spent an early career farming corn and soybeans in the Upper Midwest, my best answer to the question of why farmers hang with Trump is because:
Trump is ok with racism.
Trump is not a woman.
Trump does not like science based regulations that impinge on perceived or actual property rights.
Trump is a Republican like the neighbor down the road.
5
The largest farm state is actually California not Kansas or Iowa.I live in rural Ca. and know a few farmers.They depend on Hispanics,get free water and often sell that water to other parts of the state ,are quite wealthy and often live off of taxpayer funded subsidies.It’s really all about the money.They like Trump’s tax cuts.The embrace his attitudes toward their Hispanic workers...it justifies paying them what are sometimes “ slave wages” .They are not particularly self-aware or empathetic and certainly give only themselves credit for their success....not the cheap labor they have used for years.Losing a little business due to Trump’s trade war will only effect their bottom line this year,although it looks like Trump will bail them out.It’s kinda like a business that has been very successful for years(usually they inherited the farm from their daddy) having a slow year.I know they were worried during the drought years but in this state they can always sell their land at a pretty good price per acre and retire to Idaho.They like to say “ it’s all the fault of that dammed California government”.Most of these farmers are Trumpian to the core and have the money to prove it.
13
Don't underplay the importance of radio on the political preference of rural areas: The only voice of non-rabid conservatism is NPR, and it's seldom available outside of urban areas. The ONLY talk radio to listen to in rural areas is AM.
With AM's constant stream of venomously anti-progressive garbage, each host pushing the others further to the right in pursuit of advertising dollars, it's no wonder that those in rural areas have skewed right in recent years.
5
It's hard for me to see how Trump can be seen as like them (farmers). He is the furthest thing possible from a farmer. Geez: I'm no psychologist but...
10
I'm willing to bet that the number of farmers who sit on a golden toilet seat like trump does is zero.
That along with the fact that he managed to bankrupt multiple casinos - God's perfect creation for guaranteed profit generation - should have been big clues as to how this was going to turn out.
Those socialist city slickers in NYC who actually knew him tried to warn them, but no, they knew better. Now they reap the whirlwind.
3
Trump is one of them? The man who lived in a skyscraper in New York is one of them? The man with his golf courses and Trump towers was one of them?
No, they don't think Trump is one of them. They thought they could use him to get what they wanted. But they are slowly seeing that the bad comes along with the good. Where I live, I see bumper crops all around. Wonder who will buy all these products? Wonder how long the farms can go on with the price for their product being lower than the cost to produce it.
The farmers sure got conned. The trade war and loss of market is the price they are paying for their horrible choices.
3
Farmers, coal miners, out of work former manufacturing workers, white working class voters of middle America bought into Trump's promises, wanting to believe that he was going to restore what they saw as their rightful place in an increasingly vanishing social order threatened by the influx of immigrants, increasingly politically active racial minorities, liberal coastal elites and LGBTQ activists. I hope that these working and middle class whites are now beginning to realize that they have more in common with working class and poor minorities, the "others", than they have with rich 1% percenters like Trump and his cronies.
4
I have driven through Wisconsin hundreds of times. In the rural areas, all you can listen to, on the radio, is right wing diatribes or evangelical ministers preaching the end of times if Democrats get elected. Stop at any McDonalds and all you can see is Fox.
Farmers and people living in rural areas are not stupid. Until the Democratic Party breaks the monopoly of rural broadcasting the hearts and minds of the people living there will not change-Period.
6
American farmers (corporate and otherwise) think they are the 'real American' as opposed to the 70% of us who live in the 'big' cities, yet they love us buying their stuff. Why do they hate their customers so much?
5
When discussing the irrational support of those who are still supporting Trump after being hurt by his governing, my 15 yr old son hit it on the head. Some people refuse to admit they were wrong.
5
What Mr. Krugman is alluding to among farmers is that they voted against their own self-interest, which was fair enough in 2016, given that they liked so much of his message- MAGA, fear of the "other", attacking the "elites", and importantly promising not to touch things like Social Security, Medicare and the like. A vote for The Donald in 2020 would be a case of, "Fooled once, shame in you, fooled twice, shame on me."
4
Rural America would not even have enjoyed electricity for the past 80 years without the socialist policies of the FDR era. In general, Trump farmers are steeped in bigotry and suspicion of "the Other".
That is unlikely to change anytime soon. After Trump, they will fall for the next huckster who approaches them with a Bible in one hand and a Texas Board of Education approved U. S. history book (with lots of pictures) in the other.
A note to the previous writer about rural people: the ones who love trump are bigots.
5
I struggle to understand what makes Trump supporters stand behind this most vile human being. I have come to the conclusion that for some reason their number one issue is immigration. That single issue shapes their view.
They have the perception that our borders are wide open and that the Democrats are just fine with that and in fact support it. They are aware of all the ridiculous things he says and does and none of it matters because he speaks to this one issue and believe he has a plan.
I also believe there is an element of racism and xenophobia. It's not overt but it's there. They were never comfortable having a black President and reject everything he did even when it's against their own self interest. They know very few people that are not like them and and they fear the unknown. They have come to believe that all immigrants are a burden on them.
They don't care that their guy insults them, calls them uneducated, presents no plan for their health care, actively works to pollute the air they breath, runs up the national debt and makes impossible promises to bring back their coal jobs. They know all that... and none of it matters. Immigration does. If no one can present a more palatable immigration plan to them, then Trump will retain their support.
2
Those of us who have been watching Trump's various con games for the last forty years knew--knew!--when he first came down the escalator that anyone he professed to help with his candidacy would, in fact, be the ones to suffer at his hands.
Unfortunately, the 19% of Americans who voted for him were and are blinded by their bigotry, greed, and hunger for dominance over their fellows. They are reaping what they've sown.
China has reduced what it buys from US farmers, and those markets are not coming back, even after Trump.
At the same time, the Chinese have increased imports from Europe, so the result of the tariff war will be that the US is more isolated from its traditional allies and markets, and the Chinese will be taking them over and establishing closer ties.
Nice going MAGA. You've killed yourself.
1
Farmers may share Trump's supposed disdain for urban "elites." They still haven't figured out, to their supreme detriment, that he is one of those elites, even if a corrupt one.
1
It would be interesting to see a psychological profile of a Trump supporter's unwavering allegiance in the face of actions that consistently harm them.
1
Paul asks: “So what were farmers thinking? “
That is s key question. Paul might inquire into the role of propaganda upon their thinking: what is the information readily available to these farmers? Talk radio? Bible stations? Fox?
The deluge of misinformation and alternative facts in rural America is apparent to anyone driving across the country trying to find diversion on their car radio. And that is besides pernicious web sites, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube videos.
Brainwashing works. It sells toothpaste and Pepsi vs Coke. And it sells GOP baloney and Trump.
6
I wish I could feel sympathy for farmers. I don't. Framers voted for trump because he is an authoritarian white nationalist, and so are they. Now they are getting what they voted for. I am only sorry that my tax dollars are being used to soften the blow in the form of bailouts. The only consolation is that the bailouts are temporary, but the destruction of farm markets is likely permanent.
Framers will be reaping the hate and arrogance they have sown for many years to come. The good news for farmers is that when they come to take their farms, they will probably let the farmers keep their red hats.
2
Simply stated, free trade is a boon for farmers and Trump is anti-free trade. He killed the TPP and was hyping a potential corn sale to Japan at the G-7 that would have happened unnoticed under TPP. While deeply "integrated" with world markets, let us not also forget that certain sectors of the farm economy are also deeply "integrated" with Mexican workers, picking the fruit and vegetables, eviscerating your chicken and milking your cows.
1
Let's not discount the role Fox News has here. I'd bet $1000 if the farmers watch news, it's the only pro-Trump game in town -- Fox. And occasionally I turn to Fox to see how they handle mainstream headlines. They ether bury or spin, baby, spin. Like Trump, it's all delivered in an alarmist, "if you love your country!" tone. Rapists and invaders and a secret government -- all nonsense but delivered with authority and alarm -- like your way of life is ending soon. Global warming is pitched as a joke, a way to deprive hardworking 'Mericans of a decent living, not as an existential threat to humanity. Arguments that are absurd on their face -- like using AK-47's for target practice -- are pitched as reasonable. Fox takes full advantage of their ignorance and fears.
3
add to the 'affinity fraudster' list, all of the gop senators and u.s. congressmen from the rural states. they love to appear to disdain the liberal 'elites' by ridiculing them in front of their constituents, yet they enjoy all of the Cadillac perks that come with their positions in Washington d.c. Hypocrisy and sanctimony are rampant with these elected officials, as is their passive - aggressive disdain for their constituents. Senior U.S. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas epitomizes this.
1
But wasn't Trump himself the very quintessence of the Urban Elite the heartland found so alien to their way of thinking? Sorry folks, this one was hard to miss. I hate to bring P.T. Barnum into this discussion, but...
2
Do you want to do something to hurt the people that are hurting you? Do you want to do something to destroy the powers that are working to destroy you, your family, children and grandchildren?
If so, slow your consumption of meat. If everyone cut back in America by 20% we'd be better off. It would send a message that we are back in charge of the direction of this country.
2
In my opinion, those who support Trump but go bankrupt because of his tariffs are not worthy of concern, but for the effect of their bankruptcies upon our food supply.
They made their beds, and must sleep in them. It is unfortunate that their nearsightedness could cause others to suffer.
2
“So what were farmers thinking?”
Not much.
Trump “certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them.”
With their unflagging support of Trump, farmers and their ilk have proven themselves worthy of being disparaged. They are unwitting, disloyal citizens backing a would-be tyrant out to destroy the great American Experiment.
2
Clearly, many of the farmers who support Trump are true believers. As Dr. Saul Levine at UC San Diego put it, writing about Trump in Psychology Today, “True Beliefs” were actually “False Truths.” They recognize that their “knight in shining armor” is in reality an “emperor with no clothes.” Their avowed idol has always been a bloviating, belligerent, ill-informed, mendacious, narcissistic and inept man.
Alas, disappointment and disillusionment is the fate of zealous True Believers who put their absolute faith in a living demigod."
While Dr. Levine speaks the truth, unfortunately I'm afraid that the True Believers in America's farm belt, won't change their vote.
3
The greatest con is that on the Republican Party and the American people. The farmers are just a part of the circus of destruction conducted by the narcissistic King of Con who is himself owned by Putin and “into” Russia for millions. To be revealed as little more than a money juggler is more embarrassing than his own revelations about his sexual predatory nature, which he (and many others) still see as “manly.”
Trump is easily flattered into anti-American behavior and people who share his resentments and his dislike of any kind of regulation or rules applied to business are supporters. They think he is acting for them but, in fact, he is acting for Russia. Nearly every endeavor DT touched in his life turned to garbage, which is why he now sells only the idea of his expertise and money-making. He sells the front, the mask of the expert while behind the scenes the money that does come in from hotels etc. is juggled in massive ways (as with many of our corporations) to pay the least in taxes and keep the most for himself.
His expertise consists in destroying well run operations. As the President he has been destroying our government so that what is left reports only to him, cutting out Congress altogether as much as possible, and with only the House operating in good order our government is ineffective and non-functional. I think it is doubtful that we can sustain this as a democracy until the November 2020 election when it is already operating as a plutocracy.
1
This column is really a stretch. "Affinity fraud"? As if Trump went to farm country in a pair of overalls and milked a cow? I don't recall anything like that during the campaign. My recollection is that Trump talked non-stop about China and manufacturing jobs. I never heard him once mention soybeans.
I don't know why farmers voted for him. I'm actually going to refrain from assuming they're all white supremacists if that's still OK these days. In any case, whatever predicament the farmers find themselves in, it's got nothing to do with fraud.
The juxtaposition of this piece and Timothy Egan's "Why people hate religion" is perfect. I dare say most of the farmer community strongly believes in religion and with their messiah trump proclaiming himself the second coming there's no way support will falter, gotta have faith.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, our farm communities voted for Trump. These same farmers; orchardists, truck farmers and grape growers all use immigrant (legal and non-legal) workers. Their hypocrisy regarding these farm labors who happen to be from south of the border, is on display every single day.
2
It is well known that victims of cons are reluctant to admit it, even to themselves
1
Policies seem to be increasingly irrelevant in today's democracies so long religious & racial division among people are so easy to exploit.
There are so many issues associated with religion that make it deadly for any societ & USA is no exception.
It's now shown that religion affect the same part of our brain (front lobe) which is affected by drugs. It impair our sense of reality, perception of truth, ability to think logically while enabling us to see/listen/experience things which is not there at all. The impact get worse, probably irreversible, when practiced from early childhood. And worse, it's shown that both religious (& political) allegiance is known to be mostly hereditary.
We are making things worse by increasingly infusing religion in Govt, mainly for electoral success, in most secular democracies around the world including in the US, mainly since Reagan. Politicians, who are unable to lead with good policy & rational discussion on all-inclusive development tend to rely more on such religious & racial polarization. In many, probably most, cases racism is part of religious fundamentalism as we see in many countries & western democracies. Distortion of history to (wrongly) depict Jesus Christ as blue eyed, blond hair white man even in churches of black or brown people is a nice example. Researchers think Jesus was a Arab-Jews looking man. Farmers & factory/mine workers are just irrelevant paws in this game!
1
Sonny Perdue cancelled his appearance at the Nebraska State Fair after the refinery exemptions granted. The last Omaha World Herald survey showed more disapprove of Trump than approve for the first time ever. Rural America is not as homogenous as we talking heads assume.
With 13 percent more American farmers declaring bankruptcy over the past year, another four years of Trump being President, should make them an extinct species.
Good Night, Nurse.
1
I'm sorry, but I'm so over people who voted for hatred & bigotry over their own interests, and then have the gall to complain when the policies of the bigot-in-charge affect them. And spare me the "independence" of them when they're getting huge handouts (altho I will admit that most of those handouts are going to the big corporate farms) paid for by us taxpayers. Socialism is okay for them; for everyone else, not so much.
4
Farmers support Trump mostly. Trump called out China for cheating on trade,stealing patents. China retaliated by striking at Trumps farmer base, notice China didn't retaliate against Apple.
What Krugman and Democrats dont comprehend is many farmers do not vote their pocketbooks when values are also at stake. Is Krugman suggesting we vote our pocketbooks and ignore the fact that trade is what made China wealthy and increase communist control.
Originally opening trade with China was thought it would bring democracy and freedom there. It only solidified dictatorship.
Considering Hong Kong, South China Sea, Uyghurs, Chinese Christians, Fulon Gong..Trump and farmers are in good company. China and Democrats have common opponents.
Exactly what benefits are farmers expecting from trade talks? Do they have intellectual property rights that need protecting or are they expecting higher prices for their exports to China. I haven't heard of any financial gains they actually expect from this trade war. I guess they support it out of the goodness of their hearts towards the city elite patent and copyright holders.
2
It is true that the trump administration has contempt for their marks. In trumps world putting one over somebody is the greatest thing ever. If Marie Kondo was to ask him What sparks joy and he was forced to answer truthfully it would be the successful grift.
But truthfully I also hold these people in contempt. If I was to meet them in person I'm sure they'd be lovely, friendly and charitable but they vote for the opposite of that. The fact that they feel they are superior to others simply because they farm and they are as you say "entitled" to lots of things other people are not entitled to is telling. Not much different than the Bundy ranchers in Nevada. They are "entitled" to graze their animals on public lands and if the majority of Americans don't agree with that it's because they're not real Americans like the Bundys.
Until we get real representative voting is this country all of our lives are going to be run by people of this mentality.
2
And the ironic thing (and it is truly ironic) is that after farmers are forced into bankruptcy by Trump's actions (with their full support of his policies), these same farmers will lose their land and agricultural production to foreign (read: Chinese, among others) investors. There was a Times article just the other day talking about how the cost of agricultural land was beginning to skyrocket because of the intercession of foreign investors into the rural land market. Instead of having to buy from American farmers in the future, they will have purchased their own production ability to fill their needs. Neatly circular (drum roll with symbol crash).
8
There are no rural values in the USA like in Europe .
No sense of being from somewhere with a culture to respect and defend, an identity to develop.
You go to any small town in the USA and you have the same global chain restaurants. Mc Donald's,KFC, Del taco, etc...
Upstate NY is the closest farming universe that resembles a little to the European rural life. But its is far from the same quality in production and the cultural life is not at all comparable.
5
Some people vote against their own self-interest regularly. Some of the still reliably GOP districts in California's central valley have done this for decades.
Fear, anger at the "other" group or person whatever its form, and a false sense of righteousness and sometimes religiosity. All of these and more combine to make people vote in ways that actually harm them economically. The GOP has known this and taken advantage of it for decades.
It has become stark and even more depressing for me to see this continue and expand under Trump.
6
It's disappointing that we never hear about the huge beneficiary of the trade policies affecting American farmers: Russia. They have signed new agricultural export agreements with China.
Russia, the country that may have influenced our last election in favor of the current administration.
Now, when that administration adopts policies favorable to that country, the possible connection between the help and the policies is ignored.
5
The Huff Post has a very interesting article from the Union of Farmers, a group of family owned farms. They are suffering with the LOSS of the Chinese market.
Republicans and the Republican president who call Democrats “socialists” have been bailing out American farmers with over $103 billion in aid, and not doing a good job of it, either! Farmers are said to be waiting in lines for hours for their checks!
American’s farmers, thanks to the failed Trump Trade War, have lost the lucrative Chinese markets. They voted for Trump.
12
If Trump gets 4 more years these farms are going to tank and go on the block. I great liberal cause would be buying them up into a co-op that can work for food security, sustainable labor and environmental practices, and returning some of these lands to their natural state in favor of urbanized hydroponics. Saves on transportation costs. The former farmers can re-train as home health aids, and continue with their raving delusions while cleaning bed pans.
6
Missed in this article:
Farmers are not monolithic - many farmers depend on transient labor, so they must struggle with immigration changes. What are their views on a solution. Can we at least acknowledge that this is a complicated problem?
Farmers must know that China, with the need to feed a billion people, is pushing capital into other countries (Brazil) to up production - China has no choice but to do this, and will never let the US be the sole major supplier again. These markets will never come all the way back, even after tariffs are lifted - this is not a zero sum game, and never was.
11
One thing about farming that's different that other businesses is that it's impossible to reliably predict prices in the future. Even though Trump has devastated our incomes for the present, (thanks Don), and it's most likely that, as Dr. Krugman says, this will carry on for a long time (thanks again), there's always the possibility of a worldwide shortage of grain. Americans, being relatively rich, don't notice these shortages, but they happen now and again and prices literally go up like a rocket because demand isn't very elastic. Some people think that global warming guarantees this to happen, but I think it might be the opposite and more rainfall will result in more production at least for awhile. But it's impossible to know for sure.
2
The farmers are going to feel the loss of markets for a while to come. Their Chinese customers have already found new suppliers and will probably not hurry to return to America's farmers, especially while unpredictable Trump is president. It didn't have to be this way.
8
When China and other countries are forced to go to other countries to buy farm produce they will only come back, if they come back at all, if the price is much cheaper. If they choose to produce it themselves they will never come back. China needs to grow their own economy internally and they now have the opportunity.
3
“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.”
The incredibly obvious answers are no, no and no. Unfortunately, Krugman can’t say this in so many words because, you know, the common man!
3
Not just farmers, but farm equipment manufacturers. The economic problems of farmers due to the Chinese tariffs make them reluctant to invest in new equipment, but manufacturers were also squeezed by Trump's tariffs on Canadian steel (since lifted). Prices of ag machinery have increased while the demand has decreased.
3
I wonder if farmers might be less supportive of the trade war if they realized that one of the main victory conditions is getting China to respect IP, which is mostly about protecting technology companies from California. A message saying 'thank you farmers for sacrificing your income so California technology companies can protect their inventions' probably wouldn't go over so well.
1
Farmers have consistently been social conservatives, but in decades past, they voted, nevertheless, for Democrats, e.g. Tom Daschle and George McGovern. What changed is their perception of the Republican and Democrat parties. Democrats were known for supporting crop subsidies, rural electrification, etc. Republicans were viewed as supporters of big business, banks, etc. Now, the Republican party emphasizes itself as the home of social conservatism, and farm state Republicans, such as Chuck Grassley, are re-elected based upon their support for farm programs and social conservative issues. A Democratic presidential ticket only has a chance with farmers if it offers favorable farm policies and emphasizes competent governance over social activism. Even then, it will face an uphill battle.
2
A major trade war will itself hurt many farmers, but it hasn't happened yet, contrary to many stories in the media. Prices of exported commodities like soybeans, wheat and corn have not dropped badly. Most of the commodities actually suffered larger price drops in recent years before the trade war - is anybody blaming Obama for ruining farmers? The USDA forecast from March 2019 predicts larger total farm income in 2019 than in 2016. Trump has promised an increase of $16 billion in subsidies, which actually may offset overall any loss from exports, as the fall in exports was only expected to be $1.9 billion (in February):
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-agriculture/us-farm-exports-expected-to-fall-19-billion-in-2019-led-by-china-usda-idUSKCN1QA1TK
Oddly, Krugman does not mention the effect of expulsion of illegal immigrants and says rural America has a tiny population of immigrants. Actually many type of farming, not necessarily those which are major exporters, are critically dependent on illegal immigrant labor and if Trump actually follows through on his threats it would be a disaster for many farmers, and would increase the import of such crops. Did such farmers vote for Trump and if so what were they thinking?
3
Trump has been bailing out farmers with over $103 billion in tax payer dollars! The farmers have lost the Asian market.
"Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
I easily can understand farmers instinctively recoiling from urban elites, but a guy who seems, or pretends, to dislike his own kind (urban elites) should raise some suspicions. How do farmers feel about farmers who dislike or don't get along with other farmers?
4
The probable result of Trump’s trade war is that farming will become less of a family business and more of an agribusiness, as individual farmers get wiped out. Maybe Perdue, founder of Perdue Partners, LLC, an agricultural trading company, would rather work with the big players than small farmers. It sure seems like he’s more on their side, based on his joke. I guess he’s forgotten his roots (he was raised on a farm).
On the USDA website, Perdue’s biopic states in part, “It should be the aim of the American government to remove every obstacle and give farmers, ...every opportunity to prosper.” Why isn’t he following his own principle by advocating for them against Trump’s ill-conceived (more to the point, ill-executed) trade war?
1
It has been reported in this newspaper through interviews that many farmers believe that China has been taking advantage of US markets and that we must experience a bit of pain before the playing field is leveled. They seem to view Trump's belligerence as strength and that he will eventually win the trade war. But not all farmers believe this any longer or believed it from the beginning. That 30 percent of farmers no longer trust the administration's policies is no small thing.
Prof. Krugman, you did not mention another reason that this demographic voted for Trump -- Hillary Clinton. The Republican Party did a great job in demonizing her so Trump may well have been the lesser of two evils for many of them. Trump is a member of the coastal elite that farmers allegedly don't trust. Hillary, on the other hand, is not. Being from Arkansas she became a member of the DC elite. So, the coastal elite thing was a very effective Republican Party lie in 2016.
But another reason for the Trump vote could be the history of farm subsidies, and Bill Clinton. Most of the federal programs that help farmers were enacted by Democrats during the New Deal. The Clinton administration changed that for a while. I don't know when farmers moved right to the Republican Party but some farm subsidies were reenacted under Republican rule. That farmers voted for Trump in such large numbers seems far more complicated than a fear of immigrants or a desire to return to some fanciful racial status quo.
3
I looked up "cognitive dissonance," and there was a picture of an American farmer.
Sure, I have empathy for them as humans that are hurting. But sometimes blaming the victim is appropriate and correct.
Like Springsteen sang about the jobs not coming back, boys, those grain and other commodities ain't coming back, either. Why would China, or whomever, want to buy American again with all that uncertainty now that Brazil is providing for their needs?
You've been seriously had, my friends. Don't get defensive, it's true. Vote Democratic next time.
8
I'm here is Wisconsin, the state President Trump won in 2016 by his narrowest margin. The loss of the Chinese business has driven many already-struggling family dairy farms over the edge. They're out of business, in many cases after 100 years or more, and these families not getting their farms back.
But how can even those who have retained their farms believe that President Trump is implementing some sort of brilliant secret plan that will result in having them be much better off than they have been? It’s just amazing that these hard-working people can be conned so easily.
14
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
― Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
10
When all these farmers who believe Trump's rhetoric go out of business and try and subsist on "entitlement programs," their land will be bought up for pennies on the dollar by people like Trump and his ilk for condos and shopping malls. We'll all be so rich we can import all of our genetically modified food that's been grown in pure pesticide from China. Hooray, so much winning.
7
guess what farmers are not "a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities"-nope those are the people they feel inferior to, and rightly so. Trump is so one of them. Even tho he thinks he is one of the elite.
3
The only farmers most city people interact with are the ones who sell at the farmers’ markets, and these farm families get to meet the people who actually eat their food. I attend weekly, in Florida winters and Orange County NY summers, and can attest that these markets represent Capitalism at its best: no middlemen, fresher products and I put my cash directly into the hands who grew my food. We smile and thank each other sincerely—show me a better example of a win-win deal.
Contrast this minuscule percentage of farmers with the subsidy-dependent ones the large-scale model agribusiness has under its huge thumb. No I don’t know how the friendly Immigrant family pulling tons of produce from that famed Black Dirt vote, but they seem happy with their situation.
3
My guess is most Americans don't understand macroeconomics (including me). It's easy to be told something about something is bad (TPP) without finding out what's good about it and go straight to believing it's a bad thing... that's the general sloth of human nature.
Certain right-wing media organizations and the insidious PR of the Koch foundation have also taught the entire right-wing to think of themselves as victims, and other Americans as enemies. So as long as trump yells loud about injustice, they're in. And they don't trust the government at all to do the right thing [thanks Reagan/Gingrich for that] and don't know enough about international trade or economics to connect the dots.
6
I live in a rural area and work with dairy farmers. Krugman gets some things right, some things wrong.
Even now, most people voting GOP still believe the false narrative of Republicans being the party of fiscal responsibility. In Midwestern states like Wisconsin, they can point to Scott Walker’s first act as governor being a corporate tax cut that included the type of corporations most family farms operate under. That holds their support even while GOP policies like massive cuts to education, no funding for roads, etc are most harmful to rural areas and economies.
Then you add social issues. Many rural families identify as “Christian”. So the anti-abortion, religious rights push grabs a lot of support.
I think many vote against their best interests based on a very narrow criteria.
Yet, on the positive side. The people I work with express disgust with the present administration. I hear more support for Democrats.
There are more non-whites living in rural areas than Krugman allows. Small towns are not as homogeneous as stated. Average age of farmers is old, but to visit rural areas might open the eyes of all.
7
I'm a retired farmer. I grew Hard Red Winter and Dark Northern Spring wheat and sold all of it in east Asia, where it was made into noodles. They're great customers, people trying to make a living and raise their families, just like Americans, and they make great cars and other products which I will continue to buy if I can.
Like everybody else, farmers are vulnerable to propaganda. Because they're rural social conservatives, they watch Fox News and that forms their world view. We've had it pretty good for the last decade because farmers didn't suffer in the great recession. Despite this, some of my neighbors seem to believe the country was falling apart, not just morally, but economically as well and that drastic measures were called for.
To win rural people, Democrats need to moderate as much as they can on abortion and work hard on the gun issue with someone like Jon Tester, the Democratic Senator from Montana. States don't get more rural than Montana and yet they have a Democrat as Senator, so it can be done.
12
@roseberry
Interesting and well written. You have hit upon the two mainstays of rural support for the GOP, abortion and the Second Amendment. As the wife of a farmer told me over a decade ago, "All they care about is their guns", hence, a knee-jerk vote for Republicans. The rest of us can only hope that a tanking farm economy will be a powerful enough incentive for them to change their minds.
2
In the end, implosion of the mid-western soybean economy may be a good thing. It doesn't make much sense to buy oil from the Middle East to produce the fertilizer and run the tractors and run the pumps that drain water from the Oglalla aquifer and run the trucks, etc. just so that we can sell soybeans to the Chinese. It's too bad for the farmers and their livelihood, but I guess you get what you pay for (i.e., tRump).
7
Independent farmers will lose their farms to the banks. The banks
will sell their farms to corporate agribusiness and the independent
farmer will be history. The republican/corporate/wall street complex marches on.
7
As a group, farmers have reaped the benefits of vast amounts of American socialism much more than most other groups. They are forever being subsidized, bailed out, paid for fallow lands, given tax favors, loan help, etc. Maybe a Trump slap will awaken their seemingly dull sensitivities, but no, rural world views, deny the needs of others living beyond the dimensions of their socialized fields and lives.
11
Trump’s unintended contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to shut down crop and livestock production.
2
“So what were farmers thinking?”
Farmers aren’t taking any risk. Between Trump’s bailouts and all the pork loaded in the Farm Bill, where’s their risk? If you think about it it is RISKIER for this group to vote against Trump.
4
They distrust urban elites? Who can be more of an urban elite than a man who is wealthy and lives in a tower with his name on it in huge letters on 5th Ave. in Manhattan, one of the most expensive places on the earth to live? I doubt before this election he ever set foot on a farm and never even grew a tomato. Really didn't these farmers ever think about where this New Yorker, who has lived there his whole life, came from? As DT would say...sad.
17
What about the fact that the farm subsidies to take tariff pain away are the worst example of give away socialism in recent memory? The party of capitalism is socialism personified when it suits them.
18
If Trump has taught us anything, it's that large numbers of Americans are willing to do themselves harm as long as they can be assured that worse harm is being done to people they don't like (or imagine they wouldn't like if they actually met them).
14
It takes a lot to look away from the tremendous cynicism and cruelty of this administration and continue to support it.. Some people don't just turn away from it but fully emebrace it. You know someone like Steve Miller gets off the cruelty in ways that would be unfathonable if it weren't for the fact history is filled with such people.
Now how do we make common cause with people who are suffering and who simultaneously support things that we are in basic tension and disagreement with. Obviously while I wish everyone was some version of Emma Goldman I am sure many people would wish I was some version of someone else. But I think it is very important even when we are really enraged about what people are advocating for, to still actively fight against the injutices they are subjected to. And simultaneously we need to this without pandering or marginalizin others to placate their fears and prejudices. I am not talking specifically about farmers here. Since farmers obviously include people who have very different interests and a whole range of opinions.
6
I'm in the midst of the demise of farmers in Wisconsin. It is a painful awakening. It is loss of farms that were in families for generations. Yet they live inside the narratives of FOX and right-wing AM radio and could repeat its' talking points quite readily. But more than just the farmer will face the lies of this administration. Consumers will pay $1,000 - $1,500 more in tariff/taxes in retail prices. It will wipe out any effect of the tax breaks (which mainly went to the rich). Then the lie on climate. The failure of diplomacy and peacekeeping. We will all pay. The farmers are just first in the line of Trump's lies to Americans who will be hurt in the end.
18
Farmers think the so-called "elites" look down on them? Maybe not in the past, but I am one of the people paying for their foolishness in the form of subsidies, AND paying for their foolishness in the form of a diminished America under Donald Trump. I used to have a good opinion of farmers, but that's been diminished now, too.
20
Even before the current aid, farmers were receiving $25 billion yearly in federal funding. Although they may like Republicans, it takes bipartisan support to keep subsidies like that going, but only one irresponsible president upend the industry.
China is now developing new sources and supply chains, and whatever the outcome of the trade war it will be difficult for our farmers to recapture the market they’ve had.
Will taxpayers then need to pay even more to prop up the industry? That remains to be seen, but it’s hard to see how this trade war ends up in a “win.”
7
It is clear that farmers and farming are needed in the survival of a nation, and all humanity. So nobody wishes harm on the people that devote their lives to doing just that. BUT - if they espouse a culturally regressive and divisive attitude, and elect someone against (perhaps) better knowledge or judgement, it is for them the bear the results. They did have a choice.
4
Trying so hard not be partisan, but objectively, how can the last 2 Republican Presidents be so bad (Easy to Win Iraq War, Easy to Win Trade War), and yet so many people still vote for them? What's the worst thing Obama did? Get more people health care?
15
@Al D
Absolutely not. The worst thing Obama did was to wear a tan suit!
2
The essay suggests that it is the lack of migrants in rural America and, therefore, lack of familiarity which makes people uncomfortable with immigration. While that may be true in some places, in others it is exactly the opposite.
I lived in Iowa for 8 years. In that farming state there are small towns which used to be all white and English speaking where the supermarket is now a supermecado. The Evangelical church on the edge of town, which only conducts services in Spanish, is thriving while the Presbyterians & Methodists, even merged, cannot attract enough Sunday worshipers to keep their doors open.
Immigrants work in places like poultry processing plants. Their presence has radically changed the character of many small rural towns. On the one hand, they have revitalized what were dying places which young people left never to return. On the other hand, many long time residents and the local farmers find "our town" is no longer familiar; they no longer know everyone, no longer even understand what many of the residents are saying, and watch as the local schools struggle with the need for bi-lingual education. They are resentful of this change which they view as having robbed them of their way of life.
12
@Anne-Marie Hislop
Your point is well made against that assumption by Krugman, which I also questioned. But it does not negate the real point - that a vote for Trump proved to be against farmers’ own interests.
As far as the communities, change happens. Farm businesses need labor to replace the flight of their own kids, and I would like to believe living in a rural town fortunate enough have its churches full and main street busy, whatever language is spoken at the cash registers, is vastly better than having no town at all.
5
@Fred
Sure. Unfortunately folks cling to the idea that somehow things can go back to the way it used to be. Trump feeds that delusion.
1
We should be unifying the country. We are concerned about China's stealing but according to my sources when asked about corporate spying, "China learned corporate theft from us." So, who is the us? Well, I know the craft breweries are competitive, but if there is a problem with one of them, they come together and help the struggling brewery out. I don't really see this as an us vs. them, similar with college football. I think that is a camouflage. I think they generally are very loyal within the discipline and to many people got hurt.
That is not to say there wasn't some scolding. It's a profound love not a profane one. They support one another and lift them up.
1
American farmers are a smart bunch. They understood Trump and they knew what they were voting for. Their revenue is down and they still support Trump. He is exactly what they want him to be. This has nothing to do with money.
5
We should be unifying the country. We are concerned about China's stealing but according to my sources when asked about corporate spying, China learned from us." So, who is the us? Well I know the craft breweries are competitive, but if there is a problem with one of them, they come together and help the struggling brewery out. I don't really see this as an us vs. them, similar with college football. I think that is a camouflage. I think they generally are very loyal within the discipline and to many people got hurt.
That is not to say there wasn't some scolding. It's a profound love not a profane one. They support one another.
"...electoral system, which gives 3.2 million Iowans as many senators as almost 40 million Californians."
That's nothing. The population of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana combined is less than the population of the City of Los Angeles. That's right, just the city and not even the state or county.
That's 8 Senators for those low population states versus 2 for Los Angeles, which it has to share with 36 million other Californians.
That's the Electoral College system on steroids.
10
@Michael Lueke We were amazed and gratified when we learned that New Zealand decided they did not need an upper house that wasn't representative of the people, just a lower house that was. So they disbanded it and now everyone is represented fairly. We do not need the Senate.
12
A principal and undiscussed product of these self-inflicted trade wars is the bankruptcy of many family farms. And, who will buy these failed farms? Not other struggling family farmers, but the wealthy corporate farm friends of Trump. In fact, this may be central to the trade war strategy: the wholesale liquidation of small and fragile family farms in favor of corporate farmers who live in NYC.
10
Were the trade wars, which have caused so much damage, to end soon the farmers would get no benefits, software, manufacturing,etc. might see a better future. Farmers might after many years get back to where they were before trump. Assuming of course that climate change allows them to farm without having the benefit of historic climate to plan what crops to grow.
It seems tickets on the train to bankruptcy and poverty sell well in some midwestern states.
5
Considering Trump's and Sonny Perdues's histories small farm foreclosures would be a market they would be interested in pursuing. No gripes by industrial or non operator farms are ever printed. They are poised to pounce on the vulnerable. This fact should enlighten those who have misplaced faith and loyalty.
5
John Deere is the canary in the coal mine. According to George Will in WaPo, The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. farmers are buying fewer farm machines and John Deere reports a 24% drop in sales, the canary in the coal mine. However, Deere sales are up in Argentina and Brazil, and foreign farmers on the Pacific rim are signing the praises of MAGA knowing they'll fill the void, probably for decades to come.
Trump is making the USA the supplier of last resort. Foreign business owners will be forever leary about international trade with the USA knowing contracts and supply chains that take years to develop can be unwound with a tweet.
6
Meanwhile, Brazilian farmers burn down the Amazon to make space to grow soybeans for the new China market. Even if Trump settles the China trade war now, commodity markets will not return to their previous level for American farmers. Other countries will fill the vacuum and China will never again be primarily dependent on only one source for its needed agriculture products.
6
Who is most harmed by Trump policies?I
It is the entire USA. The government of people is no more. The government is run on his whim. The government by the people. Majority will of people is never in his consideration. The government of the people. This is the government of Trump only. The tradition of American government built over over 300 years is trashed. He attacks our bosom allies and cozies up with our adversaries. The environment, air we breath,safety valves of countries built over multiple previous administrations are scraped daily.
Dr. Krugman, we all are hurt by Trump madness.
9
Trump's formulation of his policies as 'wars' implies sacrifice, and US farmers see themselves as combatants in Trump's trade war, just as many other Trump supporters support his cultural war on immigrants, globalists, liberals, and intellectuals.
Trump's base supporters are willing to suffer economically to win against their perceived enemies. Unless the ignorance and fear that underlies these perceptions are addressed, these folks will continue to support their leader. We need better strategies to combat the GOP/Fox News fear and loathing propaganda machine.
10
For years, the news has reported that farmers feel the gov't over regulates them, doesn't understand their business, interferes in their decisions and is the cause of the family farm demise. every election, farmers are interviewed who say their way of life is threatened and Washington doesn't understand.
Of course Trump would find a constituency amongst those who seek to return to some utopian past that probably doesn't exist but must be more appealing than the worries we all have today about corporate control and climate change.
Trump is bashing government and I image seeing the bird that T flips to the establishment brings a sense of irrational joy after years of pent up angst. The fact that they elect Republicans but blame Democrats explains how easy it was for Trump to play on their emotions and conservative social positions who used the fuel provided by Republican white privilege fear mongering. They will willfully believe Trump and his no compromise rhetoric about China and all things political as long as Republicans continue to fabricate a war on values.
The stupid thing about these politics is that the Dems say gov't can't tell people how to live their lives and Reps say gov't can deny people equal freedom and opportunity. Perhaps irony is dead.
1
To the discerning voter, Trump is a blatantly obvious fraud, a lying, boasting imposter who conned his way through the campaign process. I'm dumfounded by his rise to power, but cognizant of how narcissistic authoritarians can dupe citizens. The capitalistic system of selling products is based on big lies in a billion dollar advertising business. Trump used the big lie get his name on buildings and himself in front of the camera for decades. Perhaps the gullibility is a flaw in our democracy. I'm reminded of the work Erich Fromm has done on the attractiveness of these authoritarian con men. Trump provides a field day for students of political paradigms. Uncanny.
4
The whole nation has been had by con man Trump
and his dreadful administration. His protectionism is unworkable in a globally integrated economy and would harm not just his farm supporters but consumers that shop in Walmart. His anti environmental policies will just pollute our air, accelerate climate change, degrade our forests and parks, and lower the quality of our lives.
His anti immigrant rhetoric is a demagogic appeal to hatred in a nation of diversity, has stoked gun violence,
and will hurt the economy that needs immigrants for both skilled and unskilled jobs. It is imperative that America rejects his appeal to racial and cultural hierarchy as the hateful delusion that it is. His White Evangelical supporters and his rural devotees need to look into themselves and begin to question their beliefs and their prejudices and ask why they found his message so appealing in the first place. If they do not, they will be susceptible repetitively to Right Wing demagogues with the same toxic message and will be gravely disappointed that it will never work to improve their lives and more importantly to attain the American ideals that we should all aspire to.
4
good piece but it misses what might perhaps be the most important ingredient to explain the support for "leaders" whose policies are detrimental. The What's Wrong with Kansas case. Namely, everyone seems to be afraid of god. Combining white nationalism with mean-spirited evangelicalism creates an ideology unhampered by fact and impervious to hypocrisy. Lets separate church and state!
7
You have to wonder at what point the majority of farmers will turn on Trump. Do they literally have to lose the farm to realize Trumps tariffs are really just Trump thumping his chest to please his base, and they (and we) are peripheral damage to him?
1
Once farmers lose their farm they will not fault trump they will just blame it on the coastal elites. And then their children will move to one of the coasts or perhaps to Canada.
The key to Trump's illogical success is in this article: "...they let the will to believe override their judgment."
Trump's base holds a set of beliefs that defy reason and fact, yet they are as strongly held as any religious belief.
In the same way that a person's belief in God can't be swayed, beliefs that people of color are inferior, that city folk are bad for tradition, that immigrants will steal one's job, or that they're rapists and murderers are almost impossible to change.
Like religious beliefs, they have no basis in fact. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, religion is mere opinion, and the government must legislate on facts.
The entire reason for the Electoral College, originally, was to prevent the election of an unfit President who voters chose based on emotion, not reason.
Farmers won't abandon their beliefs in God, racism, sexism or xenophobia.
It will be the fact of having no money, the fact of having tons of crops and meat with no customers, that will change the farm vote. It will have to come down to survival.
1
Iowa. What an anomaly. Why should a small mostly rural state and white state have an outsized impact on our electoral systwm? Iowa needs to go to the back of the line. They think because they get such national attention they are rational and informed. I have spent a fair amount of time in Iowa. The people are not that well informed and myopic. The churches play an outsized role and despite their so called conservatism they like the government farm dole. Iowa did not always have an outsized role and it is past time to end their unearned special electoral status. I have no sympathy for the farmers plight. They deserve what they voted for.
10
"So what were farmers thinking? My guess is that they let the will to believe override their judgment. Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
Amazing that farmers would see in Trump anything but the worst kind of urban elite: Raised in wealth, educated in private school and an Ivy League college, draft dodger, seeded with bundles of gift cash, stiffing small contractors hired to support his real estate projects, a business failure time and again.
Not exactly a dawn-to-dusk, hard scrabble, work-a-day, lunch bucket kind of guy.
3
I don’t get it. I don’t consider myself to be an extraordinary judge of character but to me Trump, during his campaign, may as well have been wearing a neon sign proclaiming himself to be a fraudster. I can’t summon much sympathy for those who got burned.
8
Not necessarily knowing you were putting a fundamentally unfit person into office (Trump has apparent malignant narcissism, coherency, and truth issues) - trusting your political party to do the vetting, it all has led us to this exhausting and dangerous junction. I sincerely hope the farmers wake up and help send the Republican party into the dustbin of history for putting our country so at risk.
2
This is an example of the overarching power of cultural identity, including one’s perception of “patriotism”, in shaping the lenses through which we see our world. I sense that many farmers believe that it is more important to have a society they perceive to be independent and productive and who share the same vision and values, than making a killing in the market. Money only goes so far in providing a sense of peace and security. And why criticize farmers? Isn’t there a move to require corporations to consider important societal goals apart from the bottom line concerns of their shareholders? Isn’t that what farmers are doing?
There is no question that China has made unreasonable demands on American businesses seeking to enter its market. Farmers see this as morally and legally wrong and want a leader who will stop it. So long as they believe that Trump is fighting the good fight – even with the wrong policies and actions – farmers will probably support him.
It is a shame that Trump is the person in charge, for he is truly incompetent. But in world in which we can easily market ourselves and shape our brand and create a false persona, Mr. Trump is simply the modern Oz.
2
Well expressed by Dr. Krugman.
Trump has a long history of such behavior. Everyone who goes into business with this guy ends up ruined - suppliers, contractors, partners and lenders. All those bankruptcies left him rich, and everyone around him poor. He always stiffs everyone else with the bill.
This is a classic con man. As this column states, farmers and others in rural America believes he’s one of them. Can you imagine anyone less like them? A shady New York real estate speculator who inherited his money and became famous through relentless, dishonest self-promotion.
This also rightly points out the deep unfairness of our electoral system. I also live in the real America, and my vote shouldn’t count less than one-tenth that of an Iowa resident.
8
I was born and raised in Iowa and lived the farming life until an adult. I know these farmers: they love America and love the farming life. And, true, they distrust "city folk" and bankers and politicians. In my recent conversations with farming families, many defend their voting for Trump the first time yet are having trouble keeping the faith. The most heart wrenching part is seeing them struggle now desperately not wanting to confess their votes may have put their farms and livelihoods at risk, now having to admit they were gulled by a con man. I find much of their continued support for Trump is fueled by the most simple of human traits--they don't want to admit to themselves they were conned. They wanted to be wise and right and patriotic, but they find themselves duped, so awfully wrong about Trump's tariffs, and the butt of administrative jokes. The pain is obvious in their faces; they've made the wrong choice, but their egos, long-time identities, and very being is wrapped up in not owning up to that choice. It's hard. The irony is that Trump is the epitome of city folk, is a banker, and is a politician; they were conned by a man most of them wouldn't want to sit next to at the local cafe.
6
@Dean Hall I really don't care. Do U?
The first step in defrauding someone is to tell them they're special, they're smarter than everyone else. Then sell them a scheme that can only be believed by those who are "special" enough to see how great it is. That's Trump's "Art of the steal". Like all those who get swindled, it's their ego that's used against them, the jiu jitsu of hubris.
And of course they're "special"! Don't they deserve all the government subsidies they get, like grazing on public land, crop subsidies, massive water projects to provide water for crops, and outsized political power because of a broken Electoral College? Despite all that, they see the government as a villain. Talk about "biting the hand that feeds you"!
With all of that, they're going to continue to believe they're "special", and continue to vote for the guy who tells them what they want to hear. They deserve whatever consequences result from their choice.
6
At some point, I wish you would write a column on schadenfreude. It's mean and no one really feels good about feeling it, but at some point along with the pain there is a sense that these people have brought on their own - and, unfortunately all of our - destruction. And it's tempting to want to see it really hurt.
When you've been supportive of the subsidies given to those farmers (and we're small farmers who get no subsidies whatsoever) and then seen the disgusting displays of gusto for Trump's racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric it's hard not to want to see them get what's coming to them. Just a bit.
4
Farmers cannot say they were conned by Trump. He displayed his vileness proudly during the campaign. Now as farmers lose their markets and the respect of many Americans, they can rest assured that the end of the trade wars will not repair the damage done anytime soon.
7
The farmers have lost their markets because of Trump and they're not coming back. Trump has no idea what he is doing and it's only going to get worse. Dismal prospect for farmers. Conned by a con man. Should have thought it through.
What i don’t get about farmers and their dislike for the urban elites is that i have never met any urban, white, brown, old or young that hates farmers or farming or the hard labor work it is. Yet we keep receiving all the hate from such groups when they elect people who really could care less about their health, their benefits, their retirement. So it really isn’t about economics.
9
When is America going to realize that Trump is a grifter, a con man and a crook. He is doing to the economy exactly what he has done with his "businesses". The Republicans who stand behind him do so because they want to stay in power, collect their pensions, keep their healthcare and continue filling up their pockets with "gifts". It is all a sham. Wake up America, before he drives us into the abyss.
1
What bewilders me as an Iowa farm girl, is how most family farmers (not all are Republican) view Trump as one of them. A man with dyed hair and tanning-booth skin, with gold-plated toilets in a NYC penthouse and a Florida mansion. A man who deals dirty and stiffs the little guy. If Trump walked into a small-town Iowa bar, he would be seen as an alien, ridiculed, no one would talk to him, and someone might even pick a fight.
One of them? Not even close.
4
"Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites..."
Hold on. If trump isn't an urban elite, what is he? He's just the very worst variety, that's all.
1
Why would a farmer, who hates elites, pick a reality show actor who was brought up to be elite and who will take anything he wants from anyone without thought? As trump destroys family farms, perhaps as a favor to Monsanto, and manipulates the stock market via tweets (Ichan cashed in), we have to wonder why they would stick by him.
Unfortunately for America, when people have been had as badly as Trump supporters have been had, they will never admit it. It would hurt too much to recognize they were played for fools. And so they will continue to be played for fools.
2
One of the players in the Trump-Ag fiasco is the American Farm Bureau, an organization I see as the farm belt's NRA. Claiming to represent "the little guy," their income depends on the support of big, corporate, agriculture producers, suppliers, and processers, insurance sales, and income from advertisers. Their lobbying arm must be robust because the organization is usually viewed as the" Voice of American Agriculture" by big media and politicians alike. They bully both into believing that they speak for a rural America as depicted by Norman Rockwell. Their positions on nearly all cultural issues is right-wing, so it required little thought on their part to invite Trump to speak to their convention in 2018. The Farm Bureau is as complicit as are Sonny Purdue and Donald Trump in this Alphonse-Gaston version of agricultural policy. https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-has-sold-out-family-farmers/
6
"Trump seemed like their kind of guy."
Born and raised in NY city, a city-slicker conman who builds fancy hotels and resorts...the farmers should be embarrassed by their gullibility.
3
The sad part, the Chinese have replaced the American farmers with other sources, and as time come by, less likely they will return. It takes time to destroy a great economy, and leadership in the world. But it is happening with every tweet, every tear down of what is important to the world. Why didn't he lead at the G7 Meeting The answer is simple, he can't lead, he's against what a free world believes. In twenty twenty the next president can only say she's sorry and tear down the tariffs unilaterally and ask, will you play fair?
1
Farmers are the biggest beneficiaries of "socialism" and yet vote for Republicans and cry about how self-made they are. They doth protest too much.
3
The American farmer will have to decide which is more important to him, his racism or his economic survival. For many, it will be a tough choice. While praising the intelligence of the American electorate, Trump secretly knows that they can be led around like bulls with nose rings - only instead of bull rings, he uses their beliefs and prejudices to lead them wherever he wants. If DJT doesn't destroy our fragile democracy, he has published the blueprint and playbook for some other demagogue to do it later. If a democracy like America's is going to exist, there will have to be a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is important and what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for dirty tricks and destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of us all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
Our farmers get more government subsidies, tax breaks, and low interest loans than any other group in America. Yet, they are anti government when it comes to programs for other Americans. They use more immigrants than other groups and they are anti immigration. They depend on trade more than any single group yet they are anti trade. But there are not many black farmers.
2
I have an idea:
Trump could invent a trade war. Starving our family farmers into selling their grandparents land to agribusinesses.
Agribusiness stock market value go up. The economy improves for the elite class only.
Fox News spins increasing stock prices to mean the economy is good for everyone. Gullible ex-farmers vote Trump into second term.
The rest of us eat antibiotic infuse meat and Round Up tainted crops. Health declines, but healthcare stock value goes up - rinse & repeat.
The important thing is that Monsanto, Cargill, Aetna, United Health Care, and the like, have their stock prices go up.
The elite class & the GOP will then let some profits trickle back down to the family farmers.
The United States of Corporations is Great Again
4
Did Krugman speak to any farmers?
Unless he actually interviews the people he is talking about(or cites others' reporting) he plays into the trope of cosmopolitan elites sneering at the 'other' rural.
I know this is an op-ed, not straight reporting, and I'm not saying he's wrong, but a whole column that analyses farmers' views without farmers' voices is below Krugman's standard.
2
We're always surprised when the same con works repeatedly because we assume the "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again" theory is, well, oh, forget about it...
It is the very nature of a con that conflates confusion with confidence that makes it so durable and resilient. Besides, who doesn't like to hear a good story 50 times? The sad fact about the con that East Coast Elite Trump played on the midwestern flyover farmers is that they fell for his con, thereby perpetuating the worst stereotypes of naive rural dwellers lacking sophistication. Perhaps worse is that Trump lacks the ability to be covert on any level and that he did this to them out in the open.
But I am a farmer, grew up on a farm in Vermont among some very rural folk disconnected from the modern era of the 70s and 80s, went to college in the midwest where the teenage birth rate was highest per capita in the nation, then after quite an urban spell got back to farming and living rurally, now in red-state Oregon where awareness of self can be found at the dollar store. I know what the good doctor is saying first hand when he suggests there are people who make life choices that directly conflict with their best interests. Folks, it's not a mystery as to why these people struggle in life to get by. And like a feedback loop, they suffer, then make bad decisions to support the likes of Trump hoping he will alleviate their suffering, then he punks them, and they suffer more.
2
Ah, "the will to believe," the slipperiest of slopes. When something isn't true and you continue to believe it, it's only fair that you suffer. However, in this case, the delusion of those in overrepresented parts of this country doom us all to, "I'm not the President, but I play one on TV."
At some point, the price paid for "the will to believe" becomes prohibitive. However, giving up the will is tantamount to calling your parents and their parents before them liars. And calling yourself a liar for having passed on that virus to your children. What a dilemma, solved only by standing together and humming loud enough so that no one can think.
The rest of us thank you for your unthinking participation.
Let us please not get into the weeds.
The big picture has two fundamental forces which are driving Trump’s behavior and the support he continues to enjoy:
First and foremost is that white America has always been racist and white supremacist/nationalist. Yes yes there are always a few people who try to look as if they are accommodating and generally tolerant- but at the most visceral level, racism is deep seated and this is about sticking it to the nonwhites. The ONLY solution is inter-racial marriages so that whiteness disappears over time.
Second: people who are 50+ still remember a time when America was NOT dependent on the rest of the world - not for imports (expect oil) nor for exports. Instead, the world was dependent on America. We did not need immigrant labor or techies to work in our factories, farms or offices; centuries ago, we had imported all the hands we would ever need for manual or menial jobs when we got those slave ships from Africa. We’d kept those people in their place for a good reason. It worked for us.
Why can’t we make America great again?
1
Well, American lobsters are happy, Canadian lobsters not-so-much...
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2019/07/10/gloucester-lobster-industry-feeling-the-pinch-from-china-trade-war
Trump and his GOP sycophants really don't understand the implications of a trade war with China. And they certainly didn't learn anything in the last few day. The headlines are moving the markets, but they shouldn't be since nothing has happened on the trade war front.
It could take years to come to an agreement with China. Farm markets will likely take longer to develop the trust needed to recover.
Working with China means developing personal relationships with people and keeping promises. Trump inc is not doing such.
1
When will we stop giving welfare to corporate farmers? Why don't we get compensation for the higher prices we now have to pay at Walmart. Why don't the senators from Walmart/Arkansas care about Walmart customers?
"Some of you may fall, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make"
Hold on just a minute! You mean Republicans are voting against their own economic interests? That they believe Trump, the ultimate NY urban billionaire, is the anti-establishment guy they've been waiting for?
Mighty stuff, that Fox News!
1
As long as Trump hands out those socialist dollars to buy the allegiance of the farmers regardless of their dire financial straits and as long as Trump continues with his white nativist and supremacist rants the farmers will continue to inflict harm on themselves, and like Trump, blame someone else.
But, I suppose the farmers have hope they will sell their corn, wheat and soybeans as soon as Trump settles that easy to win trade war.
1
GOP persuasion, especially Trump, is the opioid of farmers. It will severely harm them, but they're addicted to it.
Trump's Presidency has always reminded me of the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Unlike the movie I hope our present situation is not permanent!
From where I sit in the heart of PA farm territory my anecdotal evidence from interactions with farmers and long time locals is;
—Trump is good because he understands their plight and is bringing back “old fashioned (read white, Christian) American values”
—Democrats like AOC are trying to “take away all we’ve earned”
—Farmers have it rough because of “democratic policies”
I’m just flummoxed how they don’t see the reality of the situation. Don’t even get me started on hearing them explain away climate change as “weather” and the immigration mess —which is shrinking their seasonal workforce BTW- as necessary for our “safety and security”.
2
What goes around, comes around. The chickens have come home to roost. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Considering farmers have benefited for the massive con spelled ETHANOL, looks like the shoe is on the wrong foot now.
1
All my life I have been hearing about poor farmers and their troubles. Let's face it they work 1 month a year planting crops a few weeks harvesting them and then sit in coffee shops complaining. They hate welfare receive more from the taxpayers then any other group. They cry free markets except for them. Here is a republican plan lets just let the invisible hand roll with farming and let the market sort out what price we pay for our food. The price of food would drop dramatically. Now that is a tax cut we will all enjoy unless your anorexic.
"urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them".
Let me explain something. Maybe I'm part of the urban elite, whatever that is, maybe not. But I never looked down on farmers before.
And today, I still don't look down on farmers. No. Instead, I despise them for their racism, their comfort with supporting a lying, thieving, incompetent loser, and especially for their own narrow self-interest. Children in Yemen can be bombed, children in Texas can be torn from their mother's arms, so long as they can sell their soy beans and have their corn turned into ethanol.
What a sorry lot. Let them all go belly up. Their farms will be bought up by big agribusiness and they can become wage workers like everyone else.
2
Why should I care?
They distain citizens like me while taking barrels of my tax money through subsidies and other government benefits. Let them fail and watch some billionaire will buy their farm land for leisure activities or sell it to an agriculatural conglomerate.
2
It's simpler than that: they would rather starve than give up their bigotries and refusal to take responsibility for their own actions. They are just as sane and well-informed as everyone else. They have deliberately chosen for generations to vote for and support politicians who do bad things to them economically. However, they do take their multi-billion bribes happily, and also for generations.
1
mark twain - "it is easier to con a man than to get him to admit that he has been conned"
1
What exactly do rural whites see in Trump that they find appealing? His pathological lying? His attacks on the free press? His disastrous trade war? His racism and misogyny? His history of bankruptcies? That he is a New York elitist with international business concerns?
What a role model for rural youth.
1
I find myself in league with Bill Maher and wishing for a recession so I can feel some welcome pain if it gets this nutjob out of the Whitehouse. But, I certainly don't wish this for the benefit of the farmers who remain blind to the reality of what they have forced upon the rest of us. Of course their markets are gone and may remain so for some time to come which will cause them pain long after the Trumpster is gone.
Trump Is an urban elite, just not of the intellectual variety.
1
Having been brought up on 1960's TV Westerns and John Wayne War Movies, many of my generation think in terms of "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys". This from the same generation that now spends its free time posting pictures of their plates of food. Trump resonates in this empty bucket. "China is the enemy!"...... "Mexicans are rapists and murderers!"....... "The press is the enemy of the people!"....... "I alone can save you!" Trump is the convenient, individually wrapped, "nutritious", sandwich-sized, orange, cheese slice (with 6% actual dairy product) that nine out of ten doctors recommend and moms love. How can you not love a food product made in a laboratory and consisting of nothing but oil, dye, and preservatives? Trump is as American as cheese slices. The next President will be cheese from a spray can. How much more American can you get!?!? Cheese with opium? Now there's a great idea! Trump is a monument to dysfunction.
2
On August 19, Oregon Public Broadcasting aired an interview on Think Out Loud with Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association.
In short, the Trump's tariffs are driving many eastern Oregon cattle ranchers out of business, with sales going to Australia instead.
When asked if ranchers continue to support the president, Rosa responded "they wanted to be supportive, and have been, they've wanted to be patient ... but the promises have been going on, and our guys are hurting at the ranch level, a hurt that we haven't seen before".
Audio clip at https://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/weekend-protests-analysis-ranchers-and-tariffs-lamprey/
The most telling part of this whole sad tale was Trump’s contrast of Japan’s exports to us—“millions of cars”—and ours to them—“wheat. Wheat. (Laughter.)”.
Our president is waging his trade war on the backs of American farmers. They seem to believe they are “taking one for the team.” And he has nothing for them but disdain.
2
What should be explored more, speaking of economics, is why farmers keep such a small percentage of the retail price of their produce. Farmers often have to borrow money for seed and operations, betting on a good price at harvest.
Methinks the financial industry is at work stripping their cut out of the middle. Another way of pushing the country's wealth to the top brackets.
It is no accident that the financial industry spends a lot of money electing politicians.
Tell me farmers, is this just a bad year farmers under the Trump tariffs or when things return to 'normal' will you regain your chinese markets? If you are like the rest of our economy you need markets to survive and that of the US is not enough to sustain you. Will you vote for more of the same?
1
A few thoughts of follow the money and influence peddling in Iowa
Past Iowa Governor Branstad, founding member of ALEC, is now the Ambassador to China.
His son Eric as the Commerce Department liaison to the White House is using his position to promote his public relations firm in China.
Present Governor Reynolds and Sen Grassley are honorary Chairs of trumps Iowa re-election committee and Reynolds says trump still an advocate for Iowa farmers.
As an aside, western Iowa Rep Steve King has been supported for years despite his constant racist views.
Governor Branstad appointed Bruce Rastetter to the Board of Regents which he ran as his own little kingdom, Mr Rastetter is presently connected to ethanol plants being built and run in Brazil. Nice way to side step Iowa's corn farmers. I'm sure he knows all of the corn farmers in Brazil who will likely be selling corn to China.
Ahhh, money and influence in Iowa.
2
It may be true that some types of farming (wheat, soybeans, corn) can be done without many hands (especially immigrant hands) but much of the produce grown in this country is still picked by hand (think fruits and vegetables). And those hands are not rural white farmers and a band of white people. Those farms are being quietly killed by the combination of trumps immigration policies and climate change (which he isn't responsible for, but will surely be responsible for making it worse). Most dairy farmers were already in big trouble before the tariffs. I am decidedly not a fan of BLOTUS, but he is merely providing the nail in the coffin.
3
As you point out, farmers were the winners in our economic interactions with China.
The issue with China was 1. disregard for intellectual property rights; and 2. obstacles to direct in-country investment, neither of which had anything to do with farmers.
In terms of the farmers being made whole soon, what I am hearing is that the foot-hold that US farmers had developed in China have been lost and won't/can't be replaced any time soon.
In other words, Trump's economic policies have done long term harm to US farmer.
I realize that people don't always vote their economic interests -- that's a phenomenon that goes way back -- but still . . . we're all responsible for the choices we make, especially the ones that hurt ourselves and our families.
6
As hard as it is to say, we need to stop subsidizing these farmers. About 40% of the farms in the USA are on financial aid from the rest of us - *and* they vote for destructive political opportunists who repeat the lie that "others" are on the dole (and that the homespun American farmers are not).
We must make it a primary political goal to end their handouts, or at least get it visibly on the chopping block. At the very least will earn their respect, at best it will help educate them about our shared responsibility to help those in need across our nation.
5
"So what were farmers thinking? My guess is that they let the will to believe override their judgment."
Good grief, if farmers resent urban America, how about the rest of the world with all those "foreigners"?
But I wonder how much information farmers have about where their harvested crops go? Don't middlemen take care of that?
There is nothing like international travel to provide experiences to expand the ossified mindset and promote the view that "foreigners" as just regular people too--some of whom are about as impressive and welcoming as anyone could hope to encounter. And there is nothing like encountering some nationalist in his country who automatically hates Americans. A dose of our own medicine.
Question: Do farmers really go along with Trump's hate-immigrants ugliness? Makes no sense.
We lived in central NY for decades in apple and wine country, which relied heavily on immigrants to harvest the crops. I taught at an academic medical university, and we had a specialty in Rural Medicine. Our family doctor headed the program until he retired, and some doctors and medical students went to the farming communities to help and treat the workers, many of whom were immigrants.
Of course, a la Marx, some wealthy types with status problems in a variety of enterprises, including farming, look down on and exploit their workers as cogs in their money-making business where they reign as "boss." Trump farmers?
"He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
I hope Dr. Krugman can come to understand that sentences like this from people like him are part of the problem.
A simple word change from 'imagined' to 'believed' would help.
Human beings are extremely good at picking up social status indicators from their environment. If you tell broad groups of people that their perception of social status is imaginary, you are questioning a fundamental part of their human skill set, and are being condescending.
So...farmers have no imagination?
But Trump seemed like such an astute businessman on The Apprentice!
2
Paul...your columns are always spot on....you are one of the few who grasp that support for trump from the people he hurts stems not from policies or promises, but from the fact that trump hates the same people they do. THAT is the litmus test these days for GOP POTUS nominee.
6
Farmers are stubborn, like trump they find it impossible to admit they could have been wrong. Their instinct is always to double down. My father was active in the NFO in the 1960’s, a liberal organization that tried to organize farmers to control prices to farmers’ advantage. Like herding cats.
3
Why do many farmers and others still support this President? They cannot admit the fact that they are wrong.
3
"So what were farmers thinking?"
I have a pretty good idea. Democrats are largely from the city, but don't understand the issues faced by rural people. My grandmother told me that vacation homes were being built in their area, and taking water from local small farmers who had had access to that water for generations. Republicans listen to rural folks. Democrats say they are uneducated hicks. I think if Democrats reached out to these working people, they could take them away from Republicans. A little listening would go a long way.
@Cyclopsina - Yeah, Republicans listen all right, then they use it as ammunition against them.
Democrats are the ones coming up with policies that would actually help these people.
Perhaps the farmers should do some listening.
5
And if someone told those people that homes use a tiny fraction of the water that farmers use they wouldn’t be misdirecting their outrage. Again, people make assumptions about things without having any real information. Like climate change. It snows heavily one October day and this means climate change is a hoax.
1
Very perceptive that these farmers live the illusion of Trump’s promise of a theme park past. No policy proposal will shatter it. No insult will change their hearts. No flood washing their degraded soil will ravage their dream. No Chinese markets lost to deforested Brazilian soybeans will capture their minds.
These people are the first step in the food chain. We Democrats better find a way to talk to them.
1
"Did anyone really imagine that China, an economic superpower with its own fierce nationalism, wouldn’t retaliate against U.S. tariffs?"
China still teaches its people about "the century of humiliation." Ironically this arose out of unfair trade practices by China that led to the Opium Wars. But China was weak then. The major difference is now they are a superpower with a vivid memory.
1
Not every vote was about money. Values were also the issue. Rural people are not stupid. They are not bigots. They think - about more than the economy.
47
@Nora
If rural people's values are the same as Trump's, then farmer's livelihoods are really not the problem.
197
@Nora Which positive values does Donald Trump exhibit? In what way can his supporters, rural or not, point to him as a role model for their children and grandchildren? I’m truly curious.
310
@Nora
I'm a little confused. Exactly what "values" are you referring to? Valuing human life regardless of what color it is? Or were you referring to abortion and valuing a fetus but not the lives of brown children? Or valuing our constitution and guaranteed rights? Like freedom of speech even when you don't like or agree with what someone says?
247
It's baffling that that farmers have, for the most part, accepted a trade policy intended to boost manufacturing, while absorbing much of the pain for achieving that goal. Nobody in the administration is talking about improving the lot of farmers, but rather they're offering a few shiny objects and promising that agriculture will return to its pre-tariff state of affairs, which wasn't all that great for most farmers in the first place.
1
Krugman is right that the majority of farmers still back Trump even though his policies have hurt them for the most part. Still, if only 10% of the farmers become disillusioned enough to either vote for the Democratic candidate or a third party candidate in 2020, that would be sufficient to cost the Republicans a couple of states (think Iowa or North Carolina not to mention consolidating Democratic control over Wisconsin and Michigan).
It doesn't take much to swing an election and Trump's core is starting to fray around the edges.
3
The real reason that farmers backed Trump and his trade wars is that they still see foreigners as 1950s stereotypes from film and TV. They really believed that China would be afraid of us because “of our great military” and would simply roll over in the trade war. They learned nothing from history over the last 50 years and good luck finding a passport among them. They got played by a con man, and their pride forces them to ride it out. They have no idea how they are losing their future.
5
Brazil, now the world's largest soybean producer, is exporting virtually 100% of its crop; at a nice premium, mainly to China.
But wait a minute, Brazil is a large country with 200 million consumers; are they doing without? No, no, no they have found a cheap source of soy products to satisfy their own consumers. It seems like the second largest producer in the world, the US, is selling its large crop at a significant discount since its biggest client, China, stopped buying, so Brazil is importing all it needs for domestic consumption.
So the greatest deal maker the world has ever known (just ask him) has done it again - for Brazil.
7
Professor Krugman - if you think that farmers' support for Trump is self destructive, you should ask them about their opinions on global warming. Crops destroyed by hundred year floods that happen every other year now? Crops destroyed by hundred year droughts that happen every other year now? Gee, I wonder what could be causing that? But they will vote over and over again for the Republican Party that is determined to do nothing about global warming.
9
Your not entirely correct about the GOP and climate change. Republicans seem intent on enacting policies that increase catastrophic climate change so that their corporate sponsors can make a few pennies. They seem intent on keeping the poor, who disproportionately suffer the effects of climate change, from be able to vote. They seem intent on protecting their corporate sponsors from criminal or civil litigation when these policies kill people.
They do something.
5
12 billion dollars a year in hush money--sorry, price support payments or whatever they're calling the export-loss offsets--will go a long way to keeping the farmers on board.
4
Having visited China about 15 times. I know a little something the culture and mindset of the Chinese people. They look at Real Clear Politics and 538 and see that there is a pretty good chance that Trump will not be re-elected. They may be willing to run out the clock and deal with a new administration.
7
Two comments. First, the proportion of farmers that might actually break away from Trump in Nov. 2020 is unknown and probably unknowable right now. But the pollers and the media could do a better job of trying to measure and project it.
Second, both the Senate and the Electoral College are plainly undemocratic and a real drag on the ability of the U.S. to confront and deal with its problems. When asked what was going on at the secretive Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin answered, "We have given you a republic, if you can keep it." Well, perhaps the framers should have taken more careful note of the doomed histories of republics. Likely more democracy and less republic would have been better.
3
Even now many farmers seem to believe that the pain will end any day now, that Trump will soon announce a deal that restores all the old markets and more.
As Mark Twain observed, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
7
Many of the farmers and ranchers of California are utterly dependent on immigrant labor, both legal and illegal (one doesn't ask). The economies of the small towns near these operations would collapse without the wages of these people being spent in the area. And yet these areas are the most strongly - in some areas rabidly - supportive of Trump and his immigration policies.
SMH.
5
I still shake my head thinking of how bad the trade deals that the Democrats negotiated have turned out to be for their own Party. The big winners in NAFTA and other global trade deals were American farmers, who will never ever vote for Democrats. The big losers were factory workers who used to be the bedrock of the Democrat base, but who are now disillusioned with the Democrat party. I wish the Democrats were a lot smarter about politics and elections.
With this opioid crisis going on it may take even longer for farmers (and other Trump voters) to start to realize they've been had. If only "drugs" was the best explanation for how a con man got elected President. Trump's contradictory promises were in plain sight before the election. Farmers know that you can't cut taxes, raise spending and reduce the deficit (like Trump promised). Most farmers used to not get fooled by snake oil salesmen. But these days, most farming is done by corporations. Trump's tax cut was a bribe to corporations. Big Farming hasn't been had, they've been paid off. Maybe the best explanation for why small farmers are still supporting Trump is the "herd effect"?
The combination of greed and gullibility is what Trump exploited to get into office
2
My cousin, who is an Iowa farmer and a Democrat ,says the majority of the farmers he knows still support Trump. What would they do if they were not being bailed out by taxpayers for their bad decision they made in 2016?
5
Exactly! And Trump has forced the farmers to do what they vehemently oppose - accept government assistance (socialism). He is buying their support with taxpayer money.
7
What were farmers thinking? They weren't thinking. They were feeling. Feelings are real, but they aren't always a reflection of reality. This is America 2019, a place where feelings are the ultimate reality and facts about the empirical world only count if they validate those feelings. It's like confirmation bias on steroids, or free-based, or some other metaphor. As for the con job, it's worse than just imagining Trump is like them. Because they have invested emotion in the con--again, it's not a rational theory about how the world works--their identity is tied to sustaining it. They are ACTIVELY helping to deceive themselves because their ego is at stake. This is true of most cons. The emotional component is key. The truth, sadly, is not what this is about. That's why when the victim wakes up and begins to think, he can't believe that he fell for such an obvious fraud.
3
Midwest farmers are past the point now where they can quit Trump.They know it and he knows it. Advantage Trump.
Trump altered the farm economy so drastically that, without annual handouts, many, perhaps most, farms cannot survive as currently configured.
In time a continuing emergency becomes the new normal. Farmers around here are getting older and their children have left the farms. So what then? consolidation into corporate plantations worked by immigrants?
4
I wouldn't belittle the farmers the way Mr. Krugman has. They are quite aware of the damage the tariffs have done to their crops and livestock and will hold Mr. Trump responsible for it if he doesn't correct it by the next election. Even then it might be too late since China will have established accounts elsewhere.
3
Ethanol is another issue where Trump has parted ways with farmers. He campaigned as a champion of corn-based ethanol but his administration has granted dozens of waivers to oil refineries exempting them from requirements that they blend corn-based ethanol into their gasoline. Now he is promising the farmers that he has a really great plan to boost demand for ethanol but guess what? He is not revoking the waivers so the refineries still don't have to buy it. Maybe he will order a few million gallons of ethanol to mix in the drinks in the cocktail lounge at the Trump Hotel?
3
Another sharp, critical article rightly condemning the worst, most flagrantly divisive president we've ever had. But after reading it and others like it, I'm struck by the same question: How did such a man get in? What was included in previous events that allowed such a catastrophe to afflict our nation?
And the answer comes back: simple: sharp critics like Mr. Krugman and other supposedly perceptive commentators on the political scene were not critical enough, did not fight hard enough, the abusive conditions in our country -- the abysmal minimum wage, the enormous costs of a college education and health-care, their hands-off treatment of the big banks after '08, even allowing huge bonuses at the end of that year to its administrators.
The stage, therefore, was set for chaos, for a nation liable to a con-man, for conditions as we have them in our nation today, abysmal and uncertain not only for farmers, but businessmen and workers alike.
It is interesting that these "real Americans" consider where I live to somehow be less "American."
I live very near the center point of the rough circle formed by the Capital Beltway around Washington, D.C. My ancestors farmed the land above Middleburg since the mid-17th century, back when most of these farmers' lands were nothing but wilderness. My ancestors helped to found this nation.
And I have never held farmers in contempt, particularly what with my own relatives being farmers. But I have heard rural dwellers hold us city-folk consistently in utter contempt, considering us less American than they are and sneering at our education, our work, and our achievements, many of which were to make their lives better as well as our own.
It is not urban dwellers who hold rural folks in contempt, but very much the other way around. Oh sure, we have contempt for overt racists and we tend not to wish for our nation to follow the dictates of those without a solid education, but that's different.
12
While 85% of the land in Iowa is used for farming, farmers represent a tiny sliver of Iowa's population. Farmworkers and food processing jobs are significantly more prevalent and the filling of these jobs by migrants and refugees is one of the major causes of Iowa's white panic. While Steve King HATES brown people, the economy of Western Iowa depends on meat processing and those who do that work.
4
The real gloom in farm country will come when the "deal" is announced -- whatever limited trade deal Trump may be able to extract as part of a face-saving retreat before the election -- and farmers realize that that "deal" will not bring back their Chinese markets, perhaps for decades.
2
Here in the red-neck state of Kentucky, industrial farmers as well as small family farms have an ingrained belief in that all what Trump's doing to teach China a lesson on trade is great. The pain they feel they blame on China!
At the same time they also rely on immigrant farm help.
The exception are farmers that understand business and trade! They are also the farmers that are not creatures of habits but civilized individuals that know that China are free to buy elsewhere!
3
Absolutely everything is bad for farmers. Good crop years lead to low prices while bad ones lead to high, but there's no crop to sell. The government uses a combination of grain and dairy reserves along with $12 billion in farm subsidies in order to regulate and stabilize commodity prices. Farmers are no less vulnerable to market conditions than any other business.
Farmers export almost 40 percent for their production for a good reason, other countries can't produce what they need to feed their people and run their economies. There are only a few areas on the globe capable of meeting such demand, the United States being one. Our nation will never go hungry for lack of being able to feed itself. We have all the natural resources necessary to be self sufficient.
So there's really no trade war as far as the farmers are concerned. The land will still be ours and still be there. It'll take a growing season to rebound grain stock and a couple of years for livestock but it will return. No difference, as if it were a bad growing season.
1
Krugman's piece reminds me of a study James Scott did many years ago called "The Moral Economy of the Peasant." In it, he explored why frustrated economists couldn't force or oblige peasants in Vietnam to make rational decisions about their economic future, even when they were shown that such decisions would materially benefit them. US farmers are hardly comparable to Vietnamese peasants, but in this instance the comparison is apt. It doesn't help that in the US we have become accustomed to denying the consequences of our decisions in choosing to believe in a fantasy where our attempt at virtuous actions makes the world a better place.
8
It is better not to say the US agricultural industry is a world catastrophe of ecology .
A study published in Europe shows that, between 1994 and 2014, the toxicity of pesticides produced by US manufactures was multiplied by 50.
Killing bees and other polinisators.
30 % of birds have disappeared .
4
When you write, "...as opposed to the big metropolitan areas where most Americans actually live." Is this statement accurate? I believe that the top 100 largest cities in the U.S. constitute roughly 17% of our population.
@Steve Thomas
Yes, this is correct. About 15 years ago a watershed demographic line was crossed: more than 50% of the U.S. population now lives in cities. This migration to cities has been happening at a glacial pace over the decades and shows no sign of slowing. By the way, the same thing is happening globally.
So, after accounting for our urban and suburban population demographics, our rural population is small - and shrinking.
It seems that cultural issues were weighed more heavily than economics in the choice farmers made. We in Kansas are used to that with the farm economy. No Republican policy has ever been better for farmers, yet they vote for the GOP anyway. They figured a white man would take care of them because that's the way it is supposed to be. Unfortunately they chose a white man who takes care only of himself and his own interests. They chose a wealthy white man from New York who lived on Fifth Avenue but who portrayed himself as one of them. That made no sense and it still doesn't.
14
My son farms 10,000 acres, corn, soybeans, wheat. The market value of the grain in his bins fluctuates tens of thousands of dollars daily. Yet he still refuses to admit any regret for voting for tRump. All anyone had to do is read tRump’s supposed GOP platform and it was evident his administration would hurt farmers. Farmers are stubborn, and rightfully proud of their farms, but they need to be honest with themselves.
27
Dr. Krugman, I'm sure that as a professional economist and columnist for the NYTimes you can't outright support a recession as a sure fire way to defeat Trump. But can you at least offer some insights on how many American consumers/voters it would take, and how much they would need to cut back on spending, to spark a temporary recession up to Election Day? Percentages would work just fine. Millions of Americans would like to know. Thanks.
5
@Rob, I have found myself hoping for an economic mini failure for this exact reason. I realize it will impact my retirement, which I will need every penny of, but it is an easy sacrifice to make in these horrific times!
5
Its ok for the federal government to require every American who drives a car to buy gas with 10% ethanol that is bad for engines to help prop up the price of corn, to provide free crop insurance, crop subsidies, and special weather related cash assistance programs for farmers.
Affordable Care Act? Thats unAmerican!
14
"Trump’s desire for a trade war was out in the open from the beginning; protectionism is right up there with racism and anti-environmentalism as one of his core values," writes Krugman.
An overall good column, but I have to question whether Trump has any such thing as core values. Narcissists to his extent usually do not. Maybe it can be said that Trump's one core value is furthering his own interests. Maybe it can also be said that his genius is his ability to con. I think the wealthy know full well he's a con man, but support him for the tax cuts, etc. The real con is on the evangelicals, working class, and farmers.
5
Paul, come on! You really blame Trump for this, and not the previous 5 administrations. Trump might not be "my cup of tea", so to speak. Yet, he is the only president in my (and your) generation who is willing to deal with the trade disparities that have been going on for decades.
Had this been Obama or Clinton, you would be praising their willingness to endure economic pain for the future good of America.
How about some reality in your editorials?
@bsb I call nonsense on your comment. There are far better ways of dealing with trade disparities than ruining the lives and livelihoods of American farmers and sending the U.S. into a full blown recession. Trump just doesn't have the intellectual capabilities nor the leadership skills to deal with this, or any other issue, in an intelligent skillful manner. The markets than farmers are losing today will be gone for decades thanks to Trump's inability to skillfully and thoughtfully negotiate anything.
1
@John- John, instead of giving me your "comment", how about some answers. What would you suggest?
Had this been dealt with by previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican, we would not be in the quandary we are in now.
I do not see, in your retort any answers or solutions!
There's a fine line between the cult-like support that farmers and other avid Trump supporters give their Dear Leader and the pain he inflicts on them with his irrational tariffs. They hate to admit they've been had but bankruptcy has a way of focusing the mind on reality. As usual, the big corporate farms will use this downturn to buy-up the family farms that are now discounted bargains and they will write off any losses on their taxes. Family farmers are left with s MAGA sign and a moving van to nowhere. Sad.
9
"Did anyone really imagine that China, an economic superpower with its own fierce nationalism, wouldn’t retaliate against U.S. tariffs?"
Self evident answer is yes, lower education whites voting for Trump did.
7
I think a study of which radio programs the farmers listen to all day while working their farms. My guess is that it is some version of right wing radio (except in those liberal states like Vermont, where public radio might prevail).
The propaganda that they hear every day is no different from what the man in the WH copied in all of his "positions" and talk from day one.
He knew what they listened to and believed, and just gave them more of it.
3
You discount the fact that Iowa farmers might not actually like Trump. They simply hate Democrats more. Especially Hillary Clinton. The disdain for Trump is quite possibly mutually shared. I'm hoping Warren's agricultural plan or some other candidate can persuade them to view Democrats more favorably this time around.
1
While farmers' favorability level is high for Trump, how high would it be without the $28 billion in federal aid they are receiving?
8
Amen! Obviously insightful despite the relatively superficial and generalized observations. I'm guessing that a number of farmers got it all along, but went along not having too sophisticated a perspective. Some might even now cop to a need for some "cosmopolitan" street smarts. What's really curious is why big corporate farmers backed tRump. They shoulda known better.
I own several guitars. Many of them are Fenders whose headquarters is based in California. There are 3 levels of quality. The best are the "American Standard" models which are made in the US. The next best, and cheaper, are those constructed in Mexico. They're good, but not as good as the AS models. And they're the Fenders made in Korea. They're the cheapest and the difference in lesser quality is apparent; they're nice starter instruments. I own all three types of models, and each served a purpose. I had originally purchased the cheapest bass guitar, but as I improved as a player, I eventually bought an AS model.
I know people who believe that Fender should only make instruments in America. That's such a 19th century view of commerce. While it may be true that the balance of trade is not equal in some cases (I believe with Mexico they export twice as many products to us as we to them), we're still exporting 60-70 billion dollars to Mexico. And all the Americans who are employed in such commerce don't want to see that dry up.
And let's not forget all those Americans employed because of Fenders made it n places like Mexico and Korea. The shipping involved getting those products to places like the East coast. And the people that work in the Music stores that sell these products.
6
for the trade war, Trump acts just like "Make Trump sound like great again" instead of "Make America Great Again", doesn't it.
i agreed with Professor Krugman on "China is an economic superpower with its own fierce nationalism", although not so powerful as you imagine, but really there are much nationalism, because after more than 1 year's trade war,it sounds like to many of us that: it is not due to BUSINESS that TRUMP initiated the trade war, it is out of hatred, it seems that TRUMP do not like China develop into a wealthy country and enjoy happy lives like American people. Otherwise, why does he keep requesting a better deal to U.S. , oh, no, a better deal with himself than to China?
1
Krugman touches on but may be missing a large part of the dynamic. Having lived and worked in farm country, at times directly in the industry, it can be said that many farmers appreciate what they see as "straight talk" - and Trump's style (albeit not the content) of speech is that of someone who is giving simplistic, straight talk. They miss the substance for the flim flam. The other aspect, is most farmers are "god fearing" Christians, many - if not most - within the realms of evangelical. They tend to stick to a belief over any scientific evidence to the contrary - primarily because a preacher can stand up and tell them so. Hence Trumps use of a handful of these evangelical big named preacher in his immediate following of spokespersons to this flock - for the image of imprimatur. This combination tends to be deadly for the farm belt with this POTUS.
4
I don't have the statistics but the notion that there are few immigrants in rural America strikes me as strange. Here in Minnesota, many if not most towns in the agricultural parts of the state would have disappeared without the influx of Hispanics that's occurred over the past twenty years or so.
4
No, Prof. Krugman, middle America did not fall for Trump’s MAGA message so much as they fell for the relentless republican marketing message that convinced them that SHE was a greater evil.
Let’s not forget that trump would have never won, if the 30-year negative campaign against Hillary Clinton hadn’t been so effective. That election was not so much a “for” something, as it was an “against” (Women, Clintons, progressives, climate, gender equality, marriage equality, etc.) other, more scary things.
8
What America's farmers and Donald Trump share may be the desire to send the country back to the good old days but underlying it is the belief that they are the hardest working, most deserving and truest Americans and that everyone is else is a taker looking for a handout or a free ride. Other people are lazy; they, on the other hand, have been treated (to use Trump's favorite word) unfairly.
It is an irony that their dislike and mistrust of the "cosmopolitan elite" has put them at the mercy of precisely that.
8
In 2018, the Trump Administration committed to pay American farmers $9.6 billion to offset their losses from Chinese tariffs. Further, in May 2019 the Dept. of Agriculture initiated a new subsidy of $16 billion for farmers hit by the trade retaliation. Finally, Trump has said farmers will receive an additional $20b in 2020 "if it’s needed.” To Mr. Kruger’s point, why do farmers continue to believe in Trump’s empty promises that he’ll do right for them in spite of China’s rapacious practices?
2
As it gets closer to election day and as Trump continues to fall in the polls, his vulnerability regarding the statute of limitations for his crimes will lead to his increased desperation. He will turn from an unresolved trade war and seek real war.
He is not only willing to"wag the dog", he is willing to shake it to death.
6
Dr. Krugman should spend a little more time on the farm economy and separate out the industrial farming multinationals from the iconic but dwindling small family farmer.
And it would be interesting to find out how many Iowa farms and agribusinesses have documented and undocumented migrant workers. Sure, farmers and ranchers California and the border states may use most of the migrant workers. But if I recall correctly there was an article a year ago about the Iowa town’s anguished reaction to an ICE raid.
Without a doubt there is anti-immigrant animus motivating some Iowa farmers. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the biggest push was because they have been lifelong Republicans who believed that Trump was an astute businessman.
4
I hope every farm that only exists to export their crops goes belly up during this trade war. Maybe then we taxpayers can stop paying them to grow unneeded crops to "trade" to countries who don't want or need them.
5
One of the most interesting aspects is Trump’s con is:
“He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them.”
In my view, Trump IS an “urban" elite who looks down on people like them.
5
I live in the middle of the country and have a reasonably informed sense of what the farmers here think about Trump, even if I can see clearly that they consistently vote against their own interests.
They say they take a long view on the trade wars, whatever that means. They are often willing to look past Trump's lies and moral corruption. While farmers are very angry at him about ethanol, they are sticking by him because he is delivering on abortion and his war on women.
I seriously doubt that many farmers change their votes. For the most part, they mistrust us Democrats. They are very hostile towards change and progressive politics.
The farmers are hurting, but they will not listen to reason. The farm economy is awful and getting worse, but it is hopeless to think that farmers will change their politics, even at the risk of their own demise.
6
Its bigger than a Trump con, Dr Krugman, its a Republican "family values" con. Visiting Iowa this past summer I noted the many factory made anti abortion billboards (Knights of Columbus logo in the corner) with cute white babies on them. I recall the farm crisis of the 1980s when farming relatives sung the praises of Reagan as bankruptcy loomed over their farms. Sadly, nothing has changed in forty years. Most importantly people don't like to admit they were conned. Don't expect those farmers to vote blue in 2020.
6
FARMERS HAVE BEEN APPEARING On the PBS Nightly News Hour. To a person, they have been sincere, respectful, circumspect in their statements and articulate about the awful financial suffering they are coping with, while their finances, in many cases are going down, with no prospects of any turnaround on the horizons. In fact, there are estimates that it will take between 6 and 8 years to bring agriculture back to what it was before Trump undermined it. The general consensus has been that Trump has lost the confidence of the farmers in general, and will largely be losing their votes. Having to use their 401 retirement accounts to pay debts incurred due to Trump's debacle, and being in danger of losing their property, the farmers are starting to learn the hard way, that they've been conned. My heart goes out to them, truly. Trump charmed them into believing him. And he's taken them for all they're worth. They most know that Trump's father bailed him out of his business failures to the tune of $1 billion over a decade. Farmers don't have a Daddy Fred Trump to make their financial problems magically disappear. The cycle will continue. The farmers will shift their crops to things that we need in the US. I hope that they're able to move on and recover after being shattered by Trump's lies.
2
These markets, which developed over a number of years, have now been ceded to Brazil, Argentina and others. Assuming the China-US made war ends, China will not come running back to buy US agricultural products. The US has shown itself to be unreliable, and petty. Trading relationships have been damaged. These markets will be lost probably forever.
The good news is that that will give US farmers plenty to think about.
8
I have to say there is an odd disconnect between between perception and reality in the parts of rural America that I see on a regular--in Eastern North Carolina.
Yes--it is definitively Trump Country--very, very conservative.
Yet it is visibly NOT the ethnically or racially undiverse population such political leanings suggest. For one thing, the African-American population almost certainly represents a high percentage of the overall population than is found in urban areas. For another--Hispanics are clearly a vital part of the rural workforce--every where from actual farm work to food processing plants to construction.
If the world somehow magically returned to the golden, white society of the 1950's that his supporters dream of--but which never really existed--rural America and the agriculture industry would collapse.
5
In the long run, Trump's failure to acknowledge and mitigate climate change will be even more devastating to farmers than his trade war.
17
The assumption here is false. People do not vote on issues and policy. Many of Trump’s major policies have been long term Democratic issues Obama ran against NAFTA and the loss of jobs overseas. Democrats have long been negative towards immigration as a risk to salaries and jobs. Republicans claimed the opposite position—until Trump came along.
Farmers are going to vote for any republican regardless of policy or costs to them simply because they want to see themselves as conservatives protecting the American way of life. They whole self image is caught up in this picture
Farmers would vote for Bernie Sanders or Vladimir Putin if they called themselves conservative and Republican. It’s like religion. Just Believe.
9
"Democrats have long been negative towards immigration as a risk to salaries and jobs. "
Can you provide examples?
I disagree with Krugman on this one. Trump's appeal to farmers and to many others too is not anti-immigrant. There are plenty of immigrants who work in agriculture across the country, whose presence is well-established and essential in farming communities. Rather, his appeal to farmers (he calls them patriot-farmers) and other groups is "muscular." To those groups he personifies what it is to be an authentic man. They see him as tough, unafraid. Hit him and he hits back five times. He's not intimidated by anyone. He freely violates norms and dares others to do so. He is courageous, doing what others fear. He is loyal to those who support him, demanding loyalty too. Such behavior attracts followers, feeling reassured by what they perceive as great strength, not in a cerebral way but in a muscular way.
Yes, I know that he's being disingenuous. That's not the point. It's a well thought-out and practiced behavior, very effective in attracting supporters, particularly as research is showing, non-college-educated supporters, regardless of income level or occupation.
9
@blgreenie Have Americans suddenly found this overriding liking for the muscular in their leaders? All leaders? Some leaders. No, sir. The muscular style helps; but the overarching message is not just anti-immigrant, it is anti nonwhite
I don't buy this urban elite argument. After reading the NYT 1619, I must agree with Ken Burns comment that race informs everything we do in this country. For rural America, race, especially after President Obama, will override any personal economic loss.
7
@Amanda Jones, two resentments can exist at the same time. I've heard the phrase 'liberal coastal elites' too many times to count. Race, absolutely. Ideological division? Absolutely. trump just plays that game my Irish mother used to call "Let's him and you fight".
7
Among the problems farmers face in losing Chinese markets for soybeans and losing refinery markets for corn is that those markets may not come back. The Confederate government boycotted English and French markets for cotton in 1862 and much of it rotted on the docks. England and France did not intervene in the war. Instead they began growing large amounts of cotton in Egypt, India, and elsewhere in Africa. Meanwhile the Union blockade slowly became effective.
China is arranging to buy soybeans, etc. elsewhere. The oil industry would like to see gasohol gone altogether. Markets can take a long time to get back, if ever.
14
Only 18% of China's exports come the the United States. China's second largest "export" destination is Hong Kong, which is actually part of China. The growth of China and its growing prosperity has not come just from the thefts of US intellectual property, but from the education of its people (both men and women) and the planned development of its workers, its infrastructure, world class cities like Shanghai and Beijing, roads, bridges, rails, manufacturing centers, and tech centers like Shenzhen.
Chinese engineers have designed and built roads, bridges, and railroads in many post-colonial countries in Africa. These countries will have 2 billion people (also customers) by 2050. The Chinese have become the major trading partner to many countries in Latin America, where America has turned its back on troubled nations, like Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti.
China will find replacements for its agricultural imports and export markets as well. For family farmers in the United States, the loss of China as a market will lead to their ruin and make the lives of rural American towns and communities poorer.
Trump has cheated his contractors before and he is cheating the farmers now. If re-elected, he will cheat those who depend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, the EPA, the USDA, the FDA, the FAA, the SEC. You name it.
MAGA? Not in your lifetime or mine.
41
Funny thing we don’t need a corn based ethanol business and never have but maybe for a short period. Ethanol pollutes less so the business was created to add it to gas for pre fuel injection cars. Oxygen sensors did away with the need for ethanol in cars to pollute less.
Robert Dole and Archer Daniels Midland created what we have today. I’m not against making ethanol from WASTE but making it from corn a heavy fertilizer crop is just silly and does the world no good.
14
And Dr. K didn't even get into defrauding the midwestern farmer by handing out exemptions from the ethanol mandate to a lot of refineries. I'm not an ethanol mandate supporter, but still, you have to be amazed at this constituency's ability to get whacked first on one side of the head, then the other, yet still proclaim their love and loyalty to the tune of 71%.
19
Farmers (and indeed all 'manufacturers') will continue to side with GOP deregulationists as long as it's profitable to do so. If only the price of a product reflected its true cost in terms of social and environmental factors. Just imagine the dividends for the common good. Imagine a world with clean air, water and earth for all, where animals and workers are treated with kindness and respect. Imagine!
6
Trump has been enormously helpful to farmers: Brazilian farmers; Argentinian farmers and, (thank-you) Canadian farmers.
27
Trump’s campaign against a Huawei executive has resulted in a Chinese boycott of Canadian beef, pork and canola, and the hostage-taking of two Canadians. On the other hand, tariffs on Maine lobsters has enriched the Canadian counterpart. All of this trade chaos is due to 45.
6
@Bill
Canadian farmers?
Not where China is concerned.
"At one level, it’s not hard to see why farmers supported Trump. Hostility to nonwhite immigrants was central to his campaign, and such hostility tends to be highest in places where there aren’t actually many immigrants."
Correlation does not imply causation. I am surprised that a Nobel laureate in Economics would make such a fundamental mistake.
@NorthernVirginia
Either hostility to nonwhite immigrants does tend to be highest in places where there are not many immigrants or it does not. That is the question. If Dr. Krugman's statement is true ( and I think you will find that the research shows that it is) then correlation and causation do not even come into it.
4
@RHR wrote: " If Dr. Krugman's statement is true..."
. . . then the only support he cites for his statement is a link to a study which shows correlation between state election returns for Clinton and Trump, and percentage of foreign-born in those states -- not causation. Significantly, the study on which he relies makes no statement about "nonwhite" vs. white immigrants, calling into question the honesty of the Nobel laureate.
This is just part of the sad NYTimes never-ending campaign to re-run the 2016 election. It is disappointing to see an academic so easily drawn in and manipulated.
So why’s it not true?
1
The whole story of the disconnect between reality and what we are told by politicians or various news outlets working on their behalf is perfectly illustrated by the situation that farmers now find themselves in;
They were sold a dud. It looked good on the surface but that is all there was. There was no substance.
"Make America Great Again" is a classic confidence trick. It relies initially on sentiment to catch the emotions. The idea that we can recapture the past is a powerful motivator. Then the trick is to throw into this mix some catalysts like fear, loathing of outsiders, envy and resentment, a feeling of superiority and mix it all up so the ingredients are not too obvious. Then manipulate the effect it has on people to your advantage.
Abracadabra, you have the Maga Nation and watch out because these people believe they are the chosen ones anointed with the oil of truth and righteousness.
10
"He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
If a real estate developer who lives in a luxury high-rise in Manhattan and flies in a private jet is not an "urban elite", then I'm not sure what is.
I live in Minnesota, a state spit between the cosmopolitan, diverse Twin cities and the rural outstate areas. I travel to outstate Minnesota often for work and the people there are generally wonderful, patriotic, hardworking citizens. They are not a mob of deplorable bigots. However, in the last election, leaving the borders of the metro area one found a sea of Trump lawn signs.
Truthfully, I don't understand this. It may reflect a lack of information and inundation with Faux Noise propaganda.
Democratic candidates should spend their time in rural America educating the populace.
23
@Jon Tolins
Exactly the point I was making to one of the candidate's campaigns.
Don't ignore us.
1
@Jon Tolins
I respect your assessment of the people that you meet in rural Minnesota and I am sure that you are right but isn't it possible that the explanation for the disconnect between your impression of the people and 'the sea of Trump lawn signs' is that political beliefs often reflect deep seated feelings that can run deep through and connect whole communities and are not necessarily obvious on an individual level.
4
China and other nations we export farmed goods to are already finding substitute producers. Hence the burning of forests in the Amazon which will allow more farmland and a long-term source of the crops China needs. So the Trump trade wars have unintended consequences such as a permanent downturn in a huge market for US crops as well as a detriment to the world's ecology.
8
And of those “3.2 million Iowans,” Dr. Krugman, roughly 3 million of us aren’t farmers either. Yet we 3 million are perennially informed that air polluted by massive hog confinements and water despoiled by nitrate runoff and manure spills is just part of the price we pay for our (not-so-vibrant) farm “economy.” And as Trump’s trade wars and ethanol waivers run smaller producers out of business and usher in even more consolidation and industrial-scale operations, that environmental degradation will only accelerate.
20
The greatest tragedy with our president's trade war is the long echo it will have in farm country.
China stops buying US soybeans, turning to Brazil as a supplier. Brazil steps up, slashes and burns Amazonia to plant more of them, pouring gasoline on the climate crisis which ultimately resounds in Iowa with a warming climate unable to grow the same crops it did before. And short-term cash payments to farmers will only delay any restoration of the supply chains cast aside.
The heavy anchor chains on large Navy ships are spooled out from the chain locker as the anchor is dropped. The last links in the chain are painted as a warning signal. From this arrangement we have adopted a phrase over 200 years old. These last links are the "bitter end".
For our farmers, we have reached the bitter end.
9
Multiple studies have showed that half of farmworkers are not only immigrants, but undocumented ones, so clearly it isn't that farmers lack contact with immigrants as Krugman implies. Indeed, that is how their entire business, such as it is, works.
Additionally, farming is highly subsidized, directly and indirectly, by the federal government.
On both these counts, as well as on the free trade issue highlighted by Krugman, farmers' arrogance, short-sightedness and prejudice lead them to make a breathtakingly hypocritical choice in the 2016 election. For my part, I am glad those chicken have come home to roost.
8
@Paul
Actually, it depends on the type of farming. Raising fruits and vegetables (think California) requires a lot of seasonal labor. Wheat and corn (think Iowa) is primarily harvested with machines, not manual labor.
Here on Virginia 's Eastern Shore crops are rotting in the fields for lack of migrant pickers . No American will do picking .
You ask "So what were farmers thinking?" And the answer
to that is they were NOT thinking, much the way many American
voters 'thought', given that a character like Trump was their
choice for president.
8
I look at Perdue's comment about farmers whining as part of a well established tradition of farmers joking about themselves. Perdue was a farmer and all farmers know there is always something to complain about. So much so that my farmer friends tell jokes about it. It all depends on the context. How was Perdue's joke interpreted by his audience?
1
@Larry, nervous laughter at first, but when he kept chortling, the boos began. Did you not see it? Your standard of behavior for trump's team is so low! Let me put it this way: If President Hillary Clinton joked that Japan sent us pretty shiny cars and we sent them stupid derp wheat, how would YOU interpret that? If a female Democratic secretary of agriculture joked about farmers' plight as a whine-fest, I'm pretty sure y'all wouldn't chuckle in self deprecating humor.
And if Obama laughed at commodities while wearing a tan suit? The outrage would ignite impeachment hearings. If you didn't watch the clip, and you didn't hear the low booing, you don't get to 'look at Perdue's comment' as anything but FOX spin.
According to reports, the audience didn’t respond.
He was booed !
1
An additional problem: Nobody likes to admit they are wrong. This is true in general, but it is particularly true of conservatives. (This may be because liberals have never had to contend with the failures of their approaches, because they are never fully implemented and never have a chance to fail. But that is another story.) I have tried to give conservatives' approach a chance to convince me they are right, but the results of the Reagan/Bush1/Bush2/Republican years are enough for me to conclude that they are probably wrong, (or maybe they are unwilling to actually implement their full program because they know they wouldn't hold onto office if they did?)
But they always blame the opposition for the failure of their own policies.
Now consider the entrenched Trumpistas. I can't imagine them admitting that they are wrong about immigration, or China.
9
@RDJ The only thing the GOP really wants that it hasn't already gotten, in forty years of republican or republican lite leadership (Obama wasn't GOP-lite but he had to contend with a very conservative congress, for the most part)-- is to do away with social security and medicare. That would be followed by more huge tax cuts for billionaires. So: more money transfer to the very wealthy. It would impoverish a large portion of the elderly. It would be disastrous.
6
Sadly you are right . The interest on the out-of-control national debt will be the triggering excuse .
4
I admire Krugman and generally agree with his thoughts. I think he is looking for the answers to the rural and farm support for Trump by farmers in policy but is ignoring the role that media plays. Rural american's spend more time traveling and have more opportunity to listen to the radio and right-wing media dominates the airwaves. Those who listen are told they are special, real Americans and not to listen to any other media that will actually tell them what is going on. In spite of the right's claim that all media that isn't right wing is left biased, the right-wing media is propaganda and mainstream media accurately reports issues and performs investigative journalism. Those who listen to right-wing media will never hear an accurate description of events. Furthermore, the entire point of right-wing media is identity politics and is designed to sew hostility towards those who differ politically from the right. Hence, they may not like what Trump is doing, but it is much better than being a Democrat. There is simply no counter to this point of view on talk radio.
9
The phrase, “America’s farmers,” in the title of this column by Paul Krugman can refer to a wide variety of people who make their living off the land in rural areas.
America’s farmers may grow fruits or vegetables to be harvested and sent to wholesale grocers. They may grow fruit in fields or in orchards. They may grow grains to be sent to huge granary silos and thereafter exported all over the world, or the grains may be processed for oils and even for fuel. They may grow cotton or tobacco or flax.
People who raise dairy cows are called farmers, but people who raise cattle for beef are called ranchers, as are people who raise sheep for wool and mutton or lamb. People who raise hogs for their ham or chickens for their meat and eggs are still called farmers.
America’s farmers (and ranchers) are found in every state. They may be a half-hour ride by car to a city of fairly good size, or they may be more than two hours away.
Contrary to the beliefs of many people in major northern cities and universities, all farmers are not alike. The vast majority of them are neither stupid nor bigots.
Donald Trump focused on the farmers (and the business owners who sell to farmers) who resent politicians in Washington. Again, only some of them also resent people of color and people who are not Christian, but Trump paid special attention to those voters.
Many of those Trump supporters from 2016 realize their error.
4
@sdw
I very much hope you are right.
So with bankruptcies surging, are corporate entities buying up farms at bargain prices? Could be some method to this madness. And before long a new version of the Joads on the road.
7
Farmers who feel that urban elites look down on people like them astound me. Why the need to have an enemy? Why the need to be a victim? Maybe people in urban centers do not raise a large stink about the flow of federal dollars from urban areas to agricultural areas because the value the contribution of agriculture. We are all in this together. Don't let your self be bamboozled by a president who can only survive by dividing us.
22
Yes! Hopefully the Democratic candidate will realize the importance of the farmers and folks rural areas. The people living in the largest cities; New York, LA, and Chicago, have little power due to the disfunctional electoral college system. Note that the President campaigned as an outsider that was going to shake up Washington D.C. People in rural areas tend to not trust the Government and think it is a wasteful and corrupt bureaucracy. If the Republicans sabotage the Government, it only helps support their viewpoint that the system is a mess. Trump is good at convincing voters that he can fix the system, because he knows the loopholes. The giant tax cut undoubtably helped many farmers, but the vast majority of the money went to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, making inequality even worse. Democrats supposedly tax and spend, but Republicans give tax cuts and then waste billions on stuff like the border wall; essentially a monument to the President's ego. Apparently, the economy is doing great, but the tax cuts are not paying for themselves, and the deficit is increased when it should have decreased. Also, Mexico is not paying for the wall. Farmers must know that President Trump is a liar and has numerous issues, but the Democratic candidate needs to earn their trust, understand their concerns, and must have a deep respect for the hard-working individuals in agriculture that provide the food for our nation and many other countries.
2
Where I live on the West Coast most of the immigrants actually live out in farm country. When you go to the grocery store all the immigrants and their families are shopping just like anyone else and they always seem so nice and humble. It would seem that most farmers who know these people must feel like Trump is out of touch or a liar in the way he demonizes and disgraces these humble workers. I doubt most farmers that know the immigrant workers that work with them have negative feelings about them, they probably actually would vouch for what hard, humble and kindhearted workers they are.
6
As a former resident of rural Wisconsin, an area that went for Trump overwhelmingly, I have to admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude as I watch what is happening to farmers. They are some of the biggest hypocrites there are. They get massive government subsidies, are exempt from all sorts of state and local taxes, are exempt from fair labor standards, you name it. Meanwhile, they are the first with their hands out when commodity prices drop. They complain about immigrants, but the dairy industry in Wisconsin would collapse without immigrant labor. Meanwhile they take it on the chin from Trump and ask for more. Like many others, I am only one generation off the farm, my mother having grown up one one. But I must admit I don't have any sympathy for the plight they find themselves in. Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. They got it coming.
15
We're ALL suffering under Trump, not just the farmers. The difference is a majority of the voters didn't vote for this.
Another difference is, Trump's not throwing the rest of us $28 billion for his ridiculous trade war.
The farmers got what they voted for, and we're all paying the price. These farmers, the 71% think they're "taking one for the team?" Ha! Comical.
11
The current approval rating of trump by farmers is due to their welfare checks they get from consumers paying the import tax on foreign goods. What hypocrites of independent farmers all on their own. They have been subsidized and supported by government and big agriculture since as long as I can remember... and I am 65 years old. Support local organic farms that don't put fertilizers into our drinking water.
10
As a proud coastal elite who has zero sympathy for these Trump supporters, farmers who claimed “they were taking one for the team over China’s theft of our intellectual property”, I don’t care if you all go bankrupt. I don’t need soybeans or pork. I’m happy to buy my vegetables from Mexico and pay more if necessary.
If anyone should have raised a ruckus about the real issues with intellectual property and China, it would be Silicon Valley, and I would rather have Apple’s CEO negotiate on our behalf than Trump, who doesn’t seem to understand that tariffs are a tax that importing companies pay, not China.
If I look down my nose at Trump supporting farmers, it’s with disgust over their stupidity. Trump is tearing the nation apart, and I won’t soon forget the role that farmers played in this economic fiasco.
6
I have a relative who's a farmer -- he's a typical farmer, not part of any conglomerate -- and he still thinks Trump is the be-all and end-all. (He's also a strongly conservative Christian and still expresses total disdain and venom toward Obama.) Yet I can't imagine there's anything Trump could do or say that would cause my relative's commitment to him to waver. Sad -- and scary.
18
People are sold on emotion. No one understand this better than Trump. The American farmer has been victimized by the ultimate salesman. It is sad to watch the city slicker cliche play out between Trump and rural America. It is sad for all of us. The major flaw in Trumps ideology is not understanding that we are all in this together. The immigrant crossing the boarder to help the farmer to harvest a crop to sell to China. This process is a very organic flow. Interesting to watch the Chinese go to the "root" of the problem and destabilize agriculture. Trump has been masterfully outplayed at every turn and this is why we are beginning to see him unravel. Trump is smart enough to play crazy so we will have empathy for the poor disturbed old man who was so sick he made erratic decisions. Trump lost his lunch when the Chinese began jerking the currency. That was funny, but none of this is good. 15% will grind this economy to a halt. Copper is down 30% from 2 years ago and when copper is not in demand you are already in a recession. None of that may be true but do any of you see that Mr. Trump has a defined goal post? I don't.
4
Some might people will change their minds, but as with brexit here, I'm doubtful of the numbers. Whether it's Trump or brexit supporters, many of them seem to enjoy being nihilistic, spiteful, wilfully ignorant or worse, as long as it offends anyone who thinks differently.
In the UK this is compounded by the right wing press, which dominates 90% of the market and spouts the most insane nonsense and lies about the EU, brexit and how the UK will come out of the whole thing.
I'd happily let them wander off into their paranoid little world if they weren't taking the whole country down with them.
8
Paul is being silly. The U.S. farm economy isn't dependent on global markets at all. It's a fallacy to believe that U.S. farmers cannot survive unless they can sell their products to foreign customers. China could literally disappear from the face of the earth and U.S. farmers would be just fine. America's problem is not understanding this. We shouldn't be trading with countries that are not democratic. By doing so, we empower those governments. Want to do something about climate change? Stop trading with China.
2
I have no sympathy for anyone who at this point supports Trump. They won't deserve the rescue they will get from the next Democratic president, and they are likely to hold that president in contempt even after she's put them back on their feet.
12
If Trump gets re-elected he’ll have no need to toady up to farmers. He is a con man and has nothing but contempt for the marks who fall for him. They will get no help from Trump after they’ve given him the only thing he wants from them … their vote. He can’t run again and they’re going to buy condos or golf at his resorts. Farmers should look to all the people he has defrauded and discarded over the years for their likely future. As to the Chinese, they have long, long memories; they will not want to be so dependent on US agriculture. The Chinese market for our agriculture products is long gone already and It won’t return in this generation. The farmers haven’t seen anything yet. The next few years are going to be very, very grim for them no matter who gets elected. But if If Trump wins it will be worse. I predict that many many of his loyal followers will be ruined.
4
Let's do a little mind exercise, shall we?
If the electoral power of small-state voters were equal to those of everyone else:
a) do you think they would speak to the rest of us as if we're stupid and that we own them a living? They would no longer be able to claim they are looked-down-upon because they'd be lumped in with the rest of us.
b) do you think all of us "coastal elites" would vote merely to "stick it" to family farmers out of some false sense of grievance or resentment? After all, it seems farmers are their own worst enemies and hardly need to stick it to the elites.
c) do you think that immigration policy would be far fairer to everyone if a small group of politically powerful farmers we not in control of elections? Everyone knows that much of U.S. agriculture operates via immigrants. The farmers exploit them and don't want things to change.
We would not continue to have this conversation about "what farmers believe" if they did not receive a disproportionate level of power in our elections and politics. Ultimately, eliminating the electoral college would go a long way in changing the whole cultural and economic landscape of the U.S.
5
This is what's going to happen: we are going to go into recession, independent farms are going to go under, and big ag is scoop up all that property on the cheap. The corporations win and farms are back on the feudal system. Combine that with the decline in unions and and welcome to the United Wage Slaves of America.
14
Trump's game is 3 card monte, instead of finding his marks in Times Square (where even the dumbest of tourists know not to play a game they can't win) Trump has gone to the Iowa heartland and introduced these hardworking, stubborn, patriotic marks to a game he says they can win (it is very easy, just watch), and invariably always lose.
2
I taught in a small Kansas farm community in 1975. My best and hardest working students were farm kids who saw education as a way to escape the farm. On the other hand, some of my worst students were also farm kids who knew they would inherit the family farm and had no interest in education. These students are today’s farmer Trumpsters who are being slaughtered by Trump’s stupid trade war!
7
The only reason Trump lives in the White House is the ignorance of the Americans who voted for him.
Remember what P. T. Barnum said about suckers!
As an expat American I can vote in the presidential election from the last state I resided in, Hawaii. My vote will be for the democratic candidate.
4
If the farmers still vote for Trump and help him win the second term, then all I will be able to say is "Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
2
Part of me sees parallels with the 2018/2019 government shutdown with this farm crisis. Trump's stupidity won the day with the shutdown, and he was forced to cave in to Nancy Pelosi. Similarly, Trump will again be forced to cave in, this time with the China tariff war. Trump needs all the votes he can get; he cannot afford to lose the farm vote in red states.
Do you think the $16 billion farm bailout will solve the problem? In fact, only the wealthiest farmers have received significant relief from that money; the bottom 80% of farmers on average received less than $5000 each (Washington Post).
Soon, Trump will be forced out of the tariff war, declaring a "win" along the same lines as he did with Nafta, while actually having accomplished nothing more than helping to plunge the global economy into the next recession.
Another part of me thinks this whole tariff business is designed mainly with stock market manipulation and cowing the Fed to lower interest rates in mind, to help enrich Trump and his wealthy donors through insider trading.
If that proves to be the case, then Trump should not simply be removed from the presidency. He should be sent to prison.
5
Drive through the Texas panhandle farm/ranch/oil country, and you'll realize that there's a repeating theme where the dually pickup truck parked out front is worth more than many of the dwellings... it doesn't take very long to get the impression that Washington, DC, may as well be on another planet.
Living in Nebraska for a dozen years, it seemed almost palpable that essentially all of Nebraska would proudly welcome turning back the clock to times past.
There's a good chance that the middle of the country will simply display indifference to political realities created by the current administration (if you can call it that...), or continue the longing for the 'good old times'. Maybe the $$$ drain hasn't made as significant dent yet.
2
I'm not a farmer, not White, did not and would not vote for that thing in the White House, and live in rural Iowa. People here in "rural America" might not "imagine[] that [urban elites] look down on people like them" if you would stop making ignorant statements like "America’s farmers . . . are a tiny minority of the population but exert disproportionate political influence because of our electoral system, which gives 3.2 million Iowans as many senators as almost 40 million Californians."
First of all, if you want to talk about presidential politics, senators don't elect presidents—you may be thinking of parliamentary nations. The numbers you're looking for are 6 electoral votes for Iowa's 3.2 million residents and 55 for California's 40 million. That's still disproportionate, but much less so. (And if you compare numbers of registered voters per electoral college seat we're almost at parity.)
More indicative of your ignorance about rural America is the equating of "Iowa" with "farmers". In 2012 (the most recent year I can find statistics for), there were fewer than 132,000 farmers ("farm operators") in Iowa*, out of about 3 million residents**. That's less than 5% of the population. And that number has been dropping every year for decades, so it's likely a smaller percentage of the population now.
*https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/edwards/EdwSept14.html
**https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk
6
I live in a farming community. There exists a often unspoken entitlement that farmers have. It shows ever so often on a bumper sticker that will say “No Farms No Food”. This belief that they can do no wrong because they feed America. But the reality is that most of the farms are simply feeding cattle we don’t need and in doing so destroying our environment. Farms are massive polluters of our ground water, rivers and lakes. They kill wildlife with abandon “in protection of property”. This love of trump is simply about hating liberal elites and to say trump was wrong is to admit defeat to those who “look down on them”. They would rather cut their nose off to spite their face.
6
Farmers will fare as well under Trump as coalminers. Don't expect farmers or coalminers to turn on Trump, even as they collect welfare checks and file for bankruptcy. These are proud people, too proud to admit they have been played for suckers. Instead, they will choose denial, thus not only playing the fool to Trump but also a fool to themselves.
3
On August 19, Oregon Public Broadcasting aired an interview with Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association.
In short, the Trump's tariffs are driving many eastern Oregon cattle ranchers out of business, with sales going to Australia instead.
When asked if ranchers continue to support the president, Rosa responded "they wanted to be supportive, and have been, they've wanted to be patient ... but the promises have been going on, and our guys are hurting at the ranch level, a hurt that we haven't seen before".
Audio clip at opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/weekend-protests-analysis-ranchers-and-tariffs-lamprey/
"And as is often the case in such frauds, the con man and his associates actually have contempt for their marks."
Here in NY, for the most part, we all know Trump for what he is, which in no particular order is, conman, grifter, fraudster, carnival barker, a snake oil salesman extraordinaire.
Trump has no regard, no respect, or interest in anything or anyone which does not in some way financially benefit him.
From the get-go, the taking of the Presidency of the United States of America, was, in his mind the natural progression from NYC Landlord to Landlord of all of America, it's people, it's resources, and it's future value.
And with the current state of that other political machine, the Pelosi Schumer democrats, the Republican-Lite party, aka the Democratic Party, Trump and his Republican partners are chortling at the fact that a second Trump term is essentially in the bag.
Now let me see, no, another dead end; seems this rabbit hole gets deeper every day.
2
Brazil and Canada will gladly and easily provide China
with all the Corn, Soy and Sorghum they will ever need,
forever. More cheaply (Canadian dollar, Brazil low wages
and cost) and without all the political hassels of dealing
with the United States.
These markets are gone forever.
"How you gonna keep them down on the farm
after they've seen Par-ee"
3
@Anthony
How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they've seen the farm?
(h/t to I forget who}
I like where Trump said Japan is now beginning to make cars in the United States. It's only been, what, 30 years already?
3
Krugman has finally jumped the shark. I doubt Krugman knows any farmers or has ever been to a farm. Non-white (Krugman's word) migrants, many owned by human traffickers work in the Farm Belt. This has been true since Reagan.
Krugman is obsessed with climate change, yet he does not call out globalization's contributions. Makes you wonder if he actually knows about the damage done by shipping products half way around the world. It is clear he ignores the economic damage done. The chickens have come home to roost.
Farmers have choices. Cotton used to be processed here in the US and could be again. We could go back to a much more sustainable and less environmentally harmful 7 year crop rotation. This modern day Jeffersonian fantasy that the US can be this utopia where nobody gets their hands dirty at work and all manufacturing will be done in other countries failed in Jefferson's day and it is failing today.
It's a new school year. I hope Krugman challenges all those super smart Ivy League economics students to create a sustainable economy that is not based on increasing consumption and population growth.
1
I guess it is too difficult for the average farmer to admit they are suckers. These are proud hard working people, but they are also stubborn and fixed in their ways. So to tell their wives and children they had put at risk their farm by believing in a con man is a bitter pill to swallow. Many of them will stay with Trump to the bitter end. This is harsh, but they all may be getting just what they deserve.
4
Self deception is a common state of mind. Not just for farmers, but farmers do seem to have it in spades.
2
Republicans never will allow the electoral college to change. It ever happens this would mean the end of the Republican Party in the United States of America.
2
Gee, aren't the large farm conglomerates getting subsidies. I thought "socialism" was VERY BAD.
2
I'm certain that there are people here who remember "All in the Family". I wonder how many remember the opening song. These were the lyrics:
Boy the way Glenn Miller played
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days.
And you knew who you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again.
Didn't need no welfare state,
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days.
What's so sad about this is how untrue it was and is. The good ol' days never were. And for those who remember Deuteronomy 15:7 this is what it says: There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.
Strange how so many today overlook the fact that, to use an old adage, there but for the grace of God go I. That goes for farmers, doctors, financiers, etc. It even applies to the GOP.
Judaism and Christianity have a strong element of socialism present. Then again, given the way we treat each other, perhaps this nation is not as charitable as it likes to think it is. Enough people voted for Trump and his policies that one is forced to wonder what they pray for: the ruination of their fellow citizens or the fortitude to help build a better nation. In reality, capitalism as we practice it here is incompatible with kindness, decency, or humanity. Trump is the personification of that.
3
"But they have, in fact, been had, and they may finally be starting to realize it."
Nope.
2
Farmers are reaping what they sow by supporting Trump and this city boy couldn’t care less if they suffer the consequences.
3
"As long as he's hurting the right people.."
It doesn't matter to them - as long as he continues to make them feel superior while mocking the majority of us, they will support him. Nothing a critical thinking classe couldn't cure, but Republicans won't allow it on the curriculum because people become progressive when the light bulb goes off.
2
It's a safe bet that there are very few non white farmers. I was raised on a farm near my home town, which was a "sundown town." There were no minorities at all in our high school. Also, the town and county had very few Republicans, due to the predominance of 'southern Democrats.' Guess what. Trump took the county in 2016. His campaign slogan should have been "Make America White Again."
3
They have their anti-abortion judges, they have government subsidies by the bushel, they have political power all out of proportion to their numbers, they have their 19th century myths of the family farms, and they have a president who thinks climate change is a fraud.
When half their farms wash into the Gulf of Mexico and the other half are owned by Wall Street corporations maybe then they'll think again. I wouldn't bet on it.
3
This is what I find most grievous.
Republicans took it upon themselves to tell farmers and other conservatives that I, an educated person doing a career in IT mostly in cities and other countries, had contempt for them.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and I know I can speak here for my family, friends and neighbors. But nobody asked us, and their propaganda was delivered in sneaky and cunning ways that I wasn't even aware of.
I love good food and deeply appreciate farmers for providing it. I admire their skills and knowledge, and fully understand that the food supply is a matter of national security.
I will never forgive Republicans for what they have done to separate me from my fellow Americans, for their own greed and profit.
5
Seems to me that vision we have of farming is a little dated. We talk about them as if they are still family-run enterprises that are basically small businesses. Truth is most farmers today are workers contracted to large agricultural enterprises largely owned by investment funds. Bankruptcy has a way of eliminating the little guy and letting the big guys control more for the long term. Farmworkers and the remaining small operators are nuts if they think everyone in agriculture shares the same interests. For some, the misery being created represents an investment opportunity.
1
I admire farmers and their families for their work ethic, sympathize with their struggles to succeed, appreciate their important contribution to the lives of the rest of us. I’m a member of the coastal elite, I guess, although I don’t feel anything like elite. I know for certain I don’t fit the media stereotype - a stereotype that is perpetuated by even liberal newspaper that never challenge it. I don’t heap scorn on farmers for accepting subsidies or for not understanding the ramifications of international trade policies. What I don’t get, really don’t understand, is how farmers whose very lives depend on climate can support a man and a party that persistently deny the very existence of climate change! Surely farmers are concerned about climate. Their lives and livelihood depend on it. Recently, when driving in the Catskills, I saw a barn-side covered completely by a Farmers for Trump poster. It was July. The hottest month ever recorded by NOAA.
5
This more and more looks like an abusive marriage. Trump got the support of farmers, but they had no idea how his tariff policy would hit them, again and again.
Many abusive marriages have battered spouses who defend their abuser: “It’s just a phase, I know it’ll get better—like it used to be.” That battered spouse stays on due to affection and faith, like the farmers are doing with Trump.
Unfortunately, like with any battered spouse, the damage Trump is doing is deep and long-lasting. Even more unfortunately, he will drive more distrust of government action among farmers—but since they are more likely to view government action as more Democratic by default, some of them will fall even deeper into the Republican camp that has been abusing them.
I honestly don’t know if Kafka would find this distressing or fascinating—or both. But it’s chilling.
2
Yes, farmers will likely vote the same as in 2016. Yes, the electoral college favors some voters over others. But by harping on these external points we are in great danger of missing our own key lapse, one that will leave future historians stumped. All Democrats had to do to stave off one-party rule (they will say) is present a candidate that had some Main-Street-America appeal and they would have won in 2020. Why weren't they able to do this? Yes, Joe Biden was a feeble gesture in that direction.
Please name the democratic candidate who is,seriously talking about the economic woes of rural white Americans . (Sound of crickets chirping.) Except for Biden (who isn't saying anything) all they want to talk about is the real bad things happening to undocumented immigrants. But if you want the power to make changes you better speak directly to rural white Americans in trouble who control the electoral college.
9
The only states that matter are Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Each has scattered agriculture, not huge operations. Each has rust belt industries which are not recovering as Trump promised and each has black city dwellers- Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia who didn’t like Hilary and stayed home. For a Dem to win, he or she needs to turn around the 80,000 votes among those three states that gave Trump his victory. They need a message that applies to these states’ voters and they need turnout which was absent in 2016.
13
In a matter of seconds I was able to use Google to discover significant agricultural proposals by several of the Democratic candidates. The idea that the candidates are not concerned with supporting farmers is entirely false. Anyone can find this out if their ears aren’t stuffed full of crickets.
18
Ummmm ... have you looked at all the Democratic candidates? Andrew Yang speaks very eloquently to the real issues and economic woes... he is being shut out by the ‘mainstream’ (turning off his mic during debates, showing the leading candidates on CNN in percentages but leaving him off but putting “Beto” on).
While the Freedom Dividends sounds like a pie in the sky, I urge people to find one of his many speeches and interviews to really get a sense of what it means and what it could so to restart our ‘main street’ economy.
4
For decades, farmers have bemoaned the "death tax" as the destroyer of family farms; not one family farm has declared bankruptcy because of the death tax; apparently the same can't be said for Trump's trade war--but we hear no outrage from the farmers.
8
America's Farmers. You make it sound like the 40 acres and a mule days. What you fail to understand in your haste to criticize Trump again, is there are no 40 acre farms. 4,000 to 40,000 acre farms, yes. They are for the most part are very wealthy individuals or corporations and squeak much when they don't receive their subsidies.
4
The whole story isn't being told here, only the plight of the "farmer" relative to the current trade wars going on with tariffs attached. And who is the farmer, mom and pop only, remember the huge corporations/businesses are involved too. And can you imagine what America's heartland would be like if the $30 billions of fed subsidies went away? And how about all those sweet trade deals with foreign countries that are buying our produce? I think just a small percentage of the "farmers" are complaining as in whole billions of profits continue to be made, even with the trade wars going on. With all the federal and state hand outs to this industry/farmers, I don't think America is lighting a candle for them.
3
I feel that the farmers brought on their own problems to a great extent. They, like my brother, would have voted for Satan if he was the Republican candidate. Now they are in a predicament that will be hard to turn around. China has said that it will not buy any more agricultural products from the US. The Chinese have already replaced their source for Soy Beans, corn and other grains by going to Brazil and Argentina. Brazil is already their major source of beef. Farm bankruptcies are high and growing higher and it is not a wonder, they basically shot themselves in the foot.
5
@Bill Dooley, I cannot for the life of me figure out why they need to export so much. Farm domestically and locally.
1
@Ryan I have made that argument in the past. We import a lot of food stuffs that go on our tables from foreign countries, like Mexico, that could be grown in the US. When I was in Italy and drove down the auto strata (or strada, whichever) and saw all of the fresh vegetables in farms along the road, it was a sight to behold. It would take re-education to a good extent, but there are crops for every season. If there was an excess of a crop, frozen food companies would buy that up in a minute.
2
@Ryan
People don't want soybean and corn-burgers at McD's.
I often will read articles about farmers and the effect of the trade war on them. Many of them are worried about their own futures; but many of them say he’s doing the right thing taking on China. Then they say how they’re personally feeling the pain. Yet they still support the man who caused this. One farmer said that these markets that have been lost will never reopen since China has found new markets to buy from.
It’s kind of like having a Lion in the basement and tossing farmers to it to munch on and saying: “Well, it’s not gonna live forever, but we gotta keep feeding it until it dies.”
6
Our mistake is believing that humans are rational beings that occasionally behave irrationally. Voting is an emotionally charged act (consider how we call it a "duty"), usually driven by values, not facts. Our ability to reason is really just the food coloring to make us think the Kool-Aid is safe.
8
So the American farmers have placed their faith and trust for their future wewll being in a person who was born of privilege and wealth, who flies around in his own private 757, who lives in his own Manhattan skyscraper , who stiffs his contractors, who has put his businesses through multiple bankruptcies which means the rest of us picked up the tab for his recklessness, the self proclaimed king of debt who used his family's wealth to get out of serving his country in war time but feels qualified to besmirch a war hero, who never served the public interest before becoming president, whose business model is offering for sale real estate that is completely out of reach financially for most Americans, who supposedly makes a lot of money but doesn't pay a lot of taxes, that's who has their best interests at heart? And we're supposed to care about what these icons of American values think and give them out-sized influence in our national elections?
13
"According to a White House transcript, Trump complained that while Japan sends us millions of cars, “We send them wheat. Wheat. (Laughter.)” Do farmers realize that their president considers their livelihood a joke?"
I hadn't heard this. But it makes sense: a contemptible man has nothing but contempt for anyone who doesn't give him undying, unadulterated "loyalty."
As much as he loves money, he loves praise even more. The only way to earn praise for actions that hurt his most loyal constituents is to promise a rainbow at the end of their struggle.
Back in the day when Trump was about six months in, there were a lot of articles discussing how difficult it is for folks to admit they may have made a huge mistake in voting for Trump.
Farmers, evangelicals, and other staunch Trump allies will tolerate a high degree of the intolerable to justify their choices. Because it's human nature to seek proof for being right despite growing evidence to the contrary.
7
Before the NYTimes feels they have to write more articles interviewing rural voters who say that the coasts are elite and don't like them, in the Midwest, I hear plenty of cracks and slams about the East and West coast. it's a national pastime.
You would think that groups like the American Farm Bureau would do everything they could to keep the country united in order to preserve funding and support for agriculture- both direct and research, but instead they've been leading the charge for hard right politicians like Trump, creating more division.
As many of the comments here show, this has created less sympathy and less interest in steering money from the wealthier coasts who could put the revenue to good use to subsidizing agriculture. Trump farmers keep saying they want a free market with no government support. Their actions and statements may deliver it sooner than they like.
2
@Mike
Yet they live by the gospel of FOX news and Rush Windbag......
do they think THEY are salt o the earth like them?
No. They live in beautiful homes in the Northeast elite coast, home that most could never afford. They make HYUGE salaries with benefits telling those who don't have such largess how to live and how to slit thier own throats ( End Obamacare!!! they cry, as they think about thier own paid lifelong health benefits).
Hannity, Carlson, Windbag....they are coastal elites, farmer boys. They are entertainers making millions encouraging YOU to ruin your livelihood.
DO you think for one second any of them would give up a dime to live in the midwest? They could get jobs down the local Gazette, couldn't they? Or the Evangelical radio station?
Nope...NYC and Washington DC.
Farmers are fools if they think Trump has ANY loyalty to them.
1
Many observers, Krugman included, have explained farmers' support for Trump as a function of rural whiteness and nostalgia for our past racial hierarchy. While there is justification for this view, it discounts the enormous dependence of agribusiness on undocumented laborers, the main targets of the Trump administration. This seeming cognitive dissonance continues to baffle me.
8
This economic war reminds me of how world war 1 was presented to the very people who eventually had to fight it: short and easy to win. What could go wrong?
10
@Gvaltat
Vietnam too.
Now it's a tourist destination and manufacturing mecca.
So there's still hope for us in 2020.
I consider myself a nice person but I have no sympathy for the farmers who have voted Trump, for their current and mostly future hardships. At some point, they have started to wear blinkers and their views have shifted from political support to masochism.
10
Since the adoption of Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in the 1960's, the key to the electoral success of the GOP has been its ability to convince millions of Americans to vote against their own best interests in the name of thinly-veiled racist appeals to "traditional" (meaning white, Christian) values.
Trump changed the game in two ways. First, he discarded the "dog whistles" that conveyed clearly racist appeals without resorting to overt racism in favor of open, high-volume attacks on people of color and non-Christians. In Trump's America, hate is not only acceptable, it is in vogue. Secondly, he has waged a sadly successful war against the truth. In a world where "truth" is whatever Trump says it is (on that day), nothing is Trump's fault and every bad thing that happens can be traced to the evil plots of others.
The open question is whether Americans will continue to fall for the con.
13
@Ken
"In Trump's America, hate is not only acceptable, it is in vogue." Yes, just unbelievable. Here in the south hate is in great supply.
1
Patriotism is great but it doesn't put food on the table or pay the bills.
This is going to hurt farmers, especially small farmers, for years and they'll never be able to get those markets back. The corn, soybeans and wheat that's in storage won't last forever and will eventually rot.
So very sad that they got conned.
10
Even if Trump wins the trade war tomorrow (i.e., he capitulates and calls it victory), farmers will continue to suffer for years, maybe decades to come. That market is gone. China has found other sources. Such is the easy-to-win trade war.
That isn't bad just for farmers. Widespread farm failures presage a serious economic downturn. Look to the Great Depression as an example.
7
@Stephen Landers
Dustbowl and Depression were also helped by a lot of hot air....this is just a different version of hot air.
With the usual support, subsidies, import duties and other government largesse that farmers tend to enjoy, I would think that many farmers believe that more is to come - shifting more of the tariffs paid by U.S. consumers to their coffers. What is more interesting is that Trump has the support of big agricultural business, who certainly should have known better than to think good things would come from a Trump presidency.
I live in Spain where food is incredibly cheap compared to in the U.S., which I visit frequently for work. Milk, meat, cheese, veggies, fruit, all is much cheaper. I also travel to other European countries where food is much cheaper, including in the northern European countries.
I think Americans in general are unaware of just how much they spend to help finance all the support farmers and especially the big agribusiness get. In the discussions, I see mostly mentions of poor family farmers being down on their luck while huge corporate farms are raking it in under the current system.
In my view, public hand-outs and government spending is OK to all, even the most ardent critics, as long as it goes to them or their friends - military spending, farm subsidies, etc. tend to be very much OK for Republicans, but when spending goes to the low-income and more vulnerable, it is an outrage. Rather sickening in my view. I lived in the U.S. for 20+ years and somewhat longer in Europe, so I have a pretty good view, I think.
Thanks for a good article.
19
Makes me want to go read more of Sinclair Lewis and for that matter Upton Sinclair too. Sinclair Lewis knew these people and explained them vividly in his novels which were published in the 1920s. Upton Sinclair knew the trials of the underclass who forged our nation’s industries during the Gilded Age that ended then.
5
It doesn't really matter when the trump trade war ends for the farmers. China has moved on. They will buy their agricultural products from other countries. That ship sailed. 25 years of cultivating the massive China market down the drain. They have no one to blame but themselves for trusting the huckster masquerading as a president
59
We should all be glad we have secret ballots. It's very hard for anyone to say "I'm voting for individual 2" when they think their peers all favor "individual 1". And it's almost impossible for someone to say "My previous vote was a mistake." A secret ballot sidesteps all that.
10
"He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them."
This "urban elite", aka working slob on the coast, didn't look down on them before. But he sure does now.
No sympathy for those who still believe the in the con man. You reap what you sew, and farmers are supposed to know that best.
Farmers who are actually not locked in a trance , and have learned from the disaster they helped bring on themselves, do have the option to do differently in the voting booth in 2020.
My guess is most of the many billions in farm bail outs, which will eventually end well before any international markets reopen, went to giant corporate farming entities, not to family farms directly. And no, I don't like paying them out of my pocket to anyone who votes for this to continue.
46
In today's world of cable channels and the internet, there is no excuse for farmers not to be informed about the cause and effect of voting for someone who lies for a living. My father was a farmer and I have a degree in agricultural economics. I admire the work ethic of farmers and their desire to be stewards of the land. However, there are logical consequences for those who choose to listen to only one cable station and think a certain white man reality tv star who speaks like an evangelical minister will lead everyone to the promised land of Lake Wobegon.
40
"their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them"
If they carry on supporting Trump then urban residents, who create the bulk of America's GDP and pay for the handouts to farmers, really will look down on them.
48
I have issue with a few things in this article. 1. Farmers don’t have contact with other races. I think that Paul should visit a few farms and see how many South and Central American work on them. I myself worked in a flower greenhouse in Michigan. Most of the staff was from South of the Boarder. The owners of the farm were very racist, one time coming over the loud speaker and instructing their dogs to stay away from where the Mexicans worked because they didn’t want them eating tacos.
2. Many farmers were hoping for confrontation with China. I’m sure that people who hoped for a trade war want him to win it. They have already invested so much that they don’t want to come away with nothing. So I don’t think that people will suddenly vote Democrat, just because Trump has been bad for them, if he walks away from the trade war with nothing to show for it people would probably change, but now he still looks like he is trying to win.
6
Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas , SD farming is mechanized without the great need of immigrants. There are few, if any, major cities with considerable tax bases and left-leaning ideas. A greenhouse in Michigan, a vineyard on Long Island and a peach grove in Georgia are different states where the farmers mingle with the help and there are cities like Detroit, NY and Atlanta which cause a wider set of messages and politics to burgeon.
4
I've been wondering if farmers are happy with Trump's apparently successful efforts to destroy the research departments of the USDA. By forcing employees of two departments to move to Kansas City from Washington, Trump has managed to cause them to lose 50% or more of their employees.
From The Hill: "The move affects two wings of the USDA. Economic Research Service (ERS) employees analyze the agricultural market, but their research is much broader, including looking at food stamps, rural poverty and conservation.
National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) employees work with universities to fund research and coordinate the process that issues research grants on agriculture-related subjects, including climate change adaptation."
They also provide mandated research reports and currently have lost all of the scientists responsible for producing a report due in a month or two.
Are farmers happy with this?
27
Farmers make the connection? Mr Krugman, I doubt it. I was reared in the southern and eastern corner of New Jersey's Gloucester County, as near as darn it to below the Mason-Dixon line. The area had been in agricultural depression since the Civil War and had returned Republicans to office ditto. But the farmers among whom I grew up never put two and two together.
17
This is the area of New Jersey that spawned Kelly Anne Conway.
2
So many of us could see from the beginning that Trump was an incredibly skillful conman or as Bill Clinton called him "a master brander". We knew that all the populist bluster from a hugely entitled, self proclaimed billionaire was insincere baloney and that his care for the poor and rural America was a total con.
We despaired that so many people took it in and still do. It is the same with Brexit, built on lies, obviously bad for the people that need help the most and for the whole country and yet also built on shared identity and grievance and so worth doubling down on in the eyes of many. I have yet to see a convincing response to how we move away from this state of affairs.
29
What does brexit and Trumpism have in common, fear of the “other”.
Dr. Krugman,
It is really too bad that Trump resorted to the 19th-Century trade device to thwart China's unfair practices. It seems to me that a better and more effective way would be to stiffen the existing U.S. Import and Export regulations to prevent the worst technology transfer violations and simply block Chinese products found to have been made in violation of U.S. law. That way, the U.S. could reduce the volume of products it imports (auto parts, machine equipment, and little plastic things) while keeping the bulk of the sales of the "low-technology" exports we produce like wheat, rice, corn, and chicken feet. The result would be a smaller trade imbalance, and reduced technology transfer.
The problem? Most of the cost would be borne by big American corporations that prefer to outsource more cheaply and gain access to the 400 Million-strong Chinese middle class market.
Politically, that's a non-starter.
So...we just let the Farmers take the fall.
11
@havnaer
Your analysis is partly correct, but the lack of historical depth creates holes so glaring that your solution is inoperable : your principle error is considering US/China trade in isolation of world trade. It would take me too long to deconstruct your arguments point by point so I'll just throw out a couple of points for you to consider :
1. The US welcomed China into the world trading system by giving it "most favoured nation" status. This status was and perhaps even still, remains undeserved by China. It was meant as a carrot to lure China into more open trading, but of course China followed the successful Japanese and Korea example of managed trade to build up their economies. As you note, this was in the interest of US companies, although how it served wider US interests remains debatable.
2. For all its faults the TPP was specifically designed to exert trade leverage over China and correct decades of imbalance by Chinese abuse and its enablers in the US. But precisely because the TPP was such an effective tool at containing China, Trump tore up immediately. His job clearly isn't to defend farmers or wider US interests but only the oligarchs he represents in the US and elsewhere (whether that includes interests in Russia and China will depend on whether you care to follow the money or not).
Regards.
15
@havnaer The US has repeatedly filed complaints with the WTO to no avail, China ignores them at the expense of the American middle class. For example, most PC’s and servers in China run on a Microsoft platform, just 10% bought a license. Krugman has always advocated for tariffs, his 2010 NYT article specified a 25% across the board tariff on all Chinese goods. He is a fraud
@Andy it was the Clinton Administration that granted the most favorable nations status, with the promise that it would open markets for American and Canadian companies, the result was the opposite. The results were immediate. Two American Presidents did nothing as the American middle class was devastated, and China was lifted out of poverty. At the same time big retail went public, and used that capital to buy market share. The perfect storm. And the factories sit idle, the labor shifted to the service sector where hours and benefits are subpar.
Here's why farmers stick with Trump.
Part of the answer was in Mr. Edsall's super column in yesterday's Time. It is a must read or understanding the Trump voter.
I worked or two different farm machinery companies back in the 70's and 80's. I talked with thousands of farmers. Farmers are acutely aware that all the big industrial countries heavily subsidize their agricultural sectors and deny access to their markets to US farmers. Moreover, no US government has tried to do much about it. This has festered among farmers since the end of WWII. Now Trump comes along and says he's going to fight for trade equity. Here's the math of US agriculture. 20% of the farms can produce 80% of the food and fiber the US needs. We have to export to preserve our ag at present levels.
That is why they still support him.
6
@goofnoff
Trump doesn't know the meaning of the phrase.
Besides, what did farmers think would happen when Trump started slapping the Chinese with tariffs? That they wouldn't retaliate against their biggest US imports--farm products??
2
We heavily subsidize our farmers too.
1
Everyday there are 330+ million Americans who need to eat,and they get to do it because farmers,and ranchers decide to work. The fact that some of them vote against their own self interest makes them no different from millions of other citizens.
6
The people or countries already rich don’t consume much. The rising economies consume the most, ie China and India. It is not a zero sum game. The external demand weakness from China and India can halt growth of rich countries. The internal growth engine of rich countries needs the fuel of countries getting richer and immigration. Trying to curtail them or push them down makes a good electoral slogan, but doesn’t make any economic sense.
3
I think that Mr. Krugman used the term "cosmopolitan elites" in refering to the straw man (woman) that Trump uses to get his crowds riled up. To my way of thinking many of the Trump supporters in Red State America are the real elites - since they were told time and time again by men and women from all political persuasions and all occupations and trades who had dealt with Trump in his home Borough, City, State, and Region, that he was untruthful,a grifter, and a chisler who would pay 50 cents on the dollar on goods and services while everyone else pays the amount that's been agreed to. I guess these Red State elites felt these common people weren't worth listening, because what they saw in Trump was more relevant than what people who had been dealing with him for decades knew. They knew better. But they didn't.
43
The economic pain Trump is inflicting with his ill-conceived and ridiculously-played tariff war with China has only just begun. The Chinese have the superior advantage in all of this, because they have a command economy and because they make virtually all of our stuff!
I heard a Trump-supporter talking about how Chinese garlic is now more expensive than US grown, so the tariffs are working. Maybe so, but this simple example is a distraction from the big picture. Since US importers and consumers are paying the tariffs, NOT the Chinese, there will be that much less money to spend on other things. If there were equal numbers of US-made goods competing alongside Chinese goods, consumers could switch to American-made. But, unlike the garlic, few things are manufactured here anymore. So the tariffs are in effect a tax on our purchases. Also, is it the govt.'s business to tell me what goods to buy?
Yes, it would be great if the US made more things, but there is little appetite for the taking the risk of starting-up companies, especially when tax refunds meant to encourage such investment end up being played in the stock market instead.
8
It kind of blows my mind that when farmers need help to pick fruit and otherwise bring in the harvest would support Trump who would prevent their usual efforts to hire workers to keep their crops from rotting in their fields. Did they think that there was a long line of Americans who looked like them frustrated because they couldn't find farm work jobs? What were they thinking?
52
@Milliband
Go to the small town in a fruit and vegetable producing area and you will see a thriving Mexican American community that provides the physical labor to plant, prune, spray, harvest these crops. I could give an example and name a town or two in the part of the country where I grew up on an orchard farm.In the fifties and sixties, there were no Mexicans to do the work and my Dad relied on local labor during the harvest season, which occurred in the summer when local teenagers were hired. He had to put up with their shenanigans and had to put up a sign saying " No Horseplay."
Mexicans came and provided adult, mature, efficient labor. Dad was grateful for their labor and was accepting of their culture which he described as "they like their lunches heated (sterno heated hot plates), their music, and a little beer at the end of the day." When I would visit the farm in the summer time, I would hear singing in the orchard, (in Spanish). According to Trump, these efficient, adult, hard working Mexicans were rapists and criminals.
9
Maybe I'm crazy, but what makes farmers think that a real estate "tycoon" with a history of several bankruptcies would be able to make sound policy decisions regarding their future welfare?
111
My impression is that most farmers are conservative and, while they voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016, they are not as fanatical as Trump's hard core base. They are more the loyal remnant of traditional Republicanism. As such, most are unlikely to vote against their interests in the long term or to be satisfied with nothing more than a political junk food diet based on emotional populism.
Trump sold the tariffs to farmers as a short term sacrifice leading to a long term benefit. As the tariff war drags out and Trump's lack of a coherent strategy becomes more obvious, his solid support in the farming community will be put at risk. A midwestern Democrat with a genuine understanding of the challenges of agricultural life would have an opportunity to make a serious dent in Trump's electoral appeal.
20
From what I've heard and read, the more tariffs get piled on, the more business they lose overseas, the more farmers support Trump. Some are going into bankruptcy, losing their farm, their livelihood, and their home but nonetheless say they are so greatful Trump is fighting for them. Those still farming five years from now will probably not have regained the overseas accounts they lose in this trade war. My guess is that twenty years from now, their kids will look back on this time and learn some hard lessons about who is worthy of trust.
35
@Mary M
Right on! Agree totally except your last sentence. I think the kids will be proud their parents supported Trump and will blame the left etc. for losing the farm. Family tradition. They will vote Ivanka/Carlson in 2040.
9
There are few other segments of humanity that can hold a candle to the American farmer. They prove their courage, perseverance, and pure audacity every Spring when they go to the bank, step one in the yearly process of their life-long gamble of making a living from their beloved plot of earth. I saw that determination 60 years ago on the
semi-arid West Texas plains of my youth. Today that same resoluteness fills the eyes of the farmers I see every day from my urban living room. I meet the current definition of an elitist, and plead guilty to those sins that make me so. But these farmers know the pain, disappointment, hardship and uncertainty that goes with the gambles they take year in and year out. Staying with Trump is nothing more than just another gamble, and most of them are not likely to fold their cards any time soon.
7
Oh for Pete’s sake. Artificially attaching nobility to this group of people doesn’t make it true. Farmers that support Trump are, like any other Trump supporter, not good people. They are driven by little more than ignorance and hate and are morally bankrupt. There is no nobility or virtue involved.
2
@JMS
No. I grew up on a farm. Farmers are just ordinary people, just like everyone else. Only with less education.
1
It mystifies me why someone as astute as Paul Krugman insists on conflating rural residents with farmers. In the opening paragraph of this piece, Mr. Krugman writes "Among the most loyal are America’s farmers, who are a tiny minority of the population but exert disproportionate political influence because of our electoral system, which gives 3.2 million Iowans as many senators as almost 40 million Californians," implying that Iowa's farmers dictate the outcomes of Iowa's Senatorial elections. Given that farmers make up less than 10% of the voting age population in Iowa, this seems highly unlikely.
There are other ways to look at why urban and rural residents have, by and large, such different political outlooks and party affiliation -- ways that don't rely on one particular occupation. Steve Randy Waldman's notion of an externality lens is one example (https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/date/2019/07).
2
You are arguing a point, but it has little relation to Krugman's other than the word Iowa.
6
@Andy You are right -- I left my overall point unstated. To me, the only reason to obsess over why voters in a state or region support Trump or other Republican candidates is to try to know what strategies will be successful for Democratic candidates in that state or region. Farmers aren't Iowa, or any other rural state. Focusing on them leaves too many voters' motives unconsidered.
Farm income (gross) is the lowest it has been in 15-years. The Trump policies are of course all bogus. But what confuses the issue are Federal policies that favor some farmers, some crops, some states and ignore others Those truck farms or fruit farmers in NJ or California get little in subsidies. But they may have to meet certain FDA or EPA regulations that are exempt for other bigger producers. Tthe massive grain farmers of the heartland, sugar growers and meat producers get direct and indirect subsidies that other, smaller farmers don't. Regulations are a crazy patch work that favor some and not others..
Special Federal grants in the billions go certain farming sector - paid for by the Blue state tax payers. A farmer on TV in Iowa was complaining about the lack of requiring more ethonol for blending into regular auto fuels. This policy does nothing but boost corn sales and has little impact on air quality.
If the Democrats take back the Senate and White House straightening out this country's agricultural policies from A-Z must be a priority. This corporate welfare impacts the totalFederal budget. The GOP keeps tariffs high on sugar imports so we pay double the world price, but relax environmental regulations on these growers that are literally destroying the everglades, the Florida sea
shore and oceans.
15
Donald is a cultural president--not one whose supporters are especially concerned about economic or foreign policy or any number of other "usual" matters.
Sure, farmers are a bit concerned that they're losing their markets and price-points on their current crop. But they're more worried about being invaded by foreigners and having their local towns start suffering like the big cities. Lots of unspoken fears and concerns here--just suffice it to say that they'll keep voting for Donald as long as he builds that wall, insults the right people, the right women, the right news organizations.
It's not about the money...it's about keeping America insulated from the outside world, and keeping middle America insulated from the Left Coast and the East Coast.
End of story.
28
While some of what Krugman says here has some value, he is blaming too much on Trump. Farmers have been hurting from from cycles of overproduction and resulting prices below the cost of production for many crops for decades, especially since the elimination of New Deal programs to moderate supply and support farmers with parity pricing.
Farmers are also squeezed between highly concentrated supply industries like engineered seed, pesticides and machinery, and powerful buyers in the meat and dairy industries and grain handlers, who all extract rents from economically weaker farmers.
This, and larger subsidies for larger farms, has resulted in continuing growth of farm size that chases smaller margins as smaller and especially mid-sized farms fail. And these huge farms are more and more dependent on those labor-saving technologies that are destroying our water, biodiversity, and climate. The farm crisis of the 80s was an earlier example, and we are starting to see a repeat of that now in the dairy industry.
Trump is truly awful for many reasons. And he is making the situation in farm country worse. But unless we see the bigger underlying problems and the frustrations they are causing, as well as huge environmental and social problems, simply blaming or getting rid of Trump will not really solve anything.
8
A similar plight plagues the coal miners who extoll Trump. They share the gullibility of the farmers and unfortunately their fate.
1
@Doug
What is especially ironic is the Trump Administration use of New Deal programs to support farmers incurring losses due to the trade war with China. For this official story see: https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2018/07/24/usda-assists-farmers-impacted-unjustified-retaliation.
1
Dr. Krugman has been had, not "farmers". The solid, 71% support from Farm Journal Pulse survey participants that he cites includes non-commodity farmers and ranchers. The numbers for row crop farmers who have been negatively affected by Trump's trade policies have likely slid and account for much of the RELATIVE decline in support for Trump, in comparison to non-farming Republicans and/or conservatives who have increased their level of support for him. So, therefore, these large-scale farmers who apparently have reduced their support of Trump were not "had". Nor were smaller-scale farmers and ranchers who have remained strong supporters of Trump, as they have not suffered in his trade policies.
4
Dr. Krugman has been had, not "farmers". The solid, 71% support from Farm Journal Pulse survey participants that he cites includes non-commodity farmers and ranchers. The numbers for row crop farmers who have been negatively affected by Trump's trade policies have likely slid and account for much of the RELATIVE decline in support for Trump, in comparison to non-farming Republicans and/or conservatives who have increased their level of support for him. So, therefore, these large-scale farmers who apparently have reduced their support of Trump were not "had". Nor were smaller-scale farmers and ranchers who have remained strong supporters of Trump, as they have not suffered in his trade policies.
1
If you have ever gone to a Trump rally you will learn that Trump supporters are really different that those that attend a rally say for Biden.
I can not explain what people see in Trump, but maybe history will.
11
Let them explain it.
This trade war would have been easy to win if: 1) we had signed up the EU, Japan, and India to join in; 2) We had negotiated behind the scenes so that Xi could save face (and his job). Instead we decided to go it alone and publicly, and simultaneously Trump insulted and slapped around our allies in this fight (nationalism). European farmers and companies are thrilled that Americans are taking the entire economic cost of this fight. Meanwhile for them it is business as usual.
12
Your comments seem to demean farmers and other small business people who have very different experiences from us (I'm also an elite college professor)....to suggest that they embraced Trump because he was like them in some way is false tribalism....no one could have been more different. I think that he must have touched something that they felt powerfully, and felt was more important than immediate self-interest.
As I said, I'm in your world...a social scientist and an academic at an elite university. But I think that you are ignoring the frustrations of the people you think "should" be thinking differently. I agree with you about where they should end up....but I have more empathy and sympathy for their position.
5
@Lynn Smith-Lovin Yep, a system that failed/ignored them but I doubt it was "deep" and "powerful" - I think most are "eh" and couldn't vote for Clinton for tribal reasons but they supported Trump because they knew he'd cause elites pain. I know many such voters.
4
@RamS
In the rush hour traffic near Chicago yesterday, I followed a car with a bumper sticker that read:
"Trump 2020
Make liberals cry again."
Guess what? The driver was an old white guy with a full grayish white beard. I would have liked to tell him "There's no crying in politics."
1
Every farmer getting a Trump subsidy should be required to send 1,000 thank you notes to random tax payers next April 15th.
26
I want to inherit a multimillion dollar business (farm) and call myself a self-made success.
Remember, six generations ago it was populated by native Americans.
I then want to vote AGAINST my own self interests.
Then, I want a a big government handout.
But, I live in a city, and my great, great, great grandparents didn’t get a big, free plot of land to give to me.
40
Coincidentally, something similar has happened in the U.K. The majority of farmers voted for Brexit from the European Union, despite the fact that many of them will be bankrupted by the new paradigm. And again, conservative attitudes were behind it.
33
Honestly, if the alternative (big Ag scooping up the farms, polluting, lobbying for more of my taxes to prop up sugar, meat, and corn) were not worse, I’d like to see them all go bankrupt. Elections have consequences.
5
The farmers I see interviewed on the television news seem to have voted based on the question, "What's in it for me?" Now they know. The question should have been, "What's in it for the United States?"
11
…the farm economy is in fact deeply integrated with and dependent on world markets.
But not all farm economy. The small farm and its wide ranging crops and domestic animals, that was a mainstay of rural pride and culture, is doing quite well.
Located closer to urban areas, traditional small farming is making a comeback to the benefit of urban people getting a step closer to an aspect of life many take for granted.
7
"they convinced themselves that he knew what he was doing, that he would win his trade war and that they would be among the victors sharing the spoils."
This is what we hear from farmers throughout the midwest, even as they are headed for bankruptcy. These people run million dollar businesses. It is unfathomable how deep they are sunk into the Trump swamp. They will be dragged under the muck, apparently, before they will give up their fantasy that Trump is actually doing something to help them.
Trump's latest insult to farmers was to exempt 31 oil refineries from the requirement that they mix ethanol (from corn) with their gasolene output. It was a "slap in the face" to farmers, but those interviewed still stuck with Trump.
If farmers think that Costal liberals have contempt for them, they should think twice about Trump. His contempt for them is complete--and after they pull the R lever in 2020, he will abandon them just like he abandons anyone who is no longer of any use to him.
37
Let's not forget the role of Big Ag in all the fun and games. The family farm is getting consolidated out of existence.
Farming with expensive chemicals, dealing with monopolies on seeds, the need for expensive machines to replace labor - and climate change on top of it all...
It's a wonder we're not seeing food shortages in the U.S. Give Trump four more years and watch what happens.
9
@Larry Roth - Better do like the Mormons and start
your survival food pantries.
1
Paul Krugman presents Trump-supporting farmers as rubes who have been conned by a second-rate huckster. While there is certainly truth to that assessment, naïveté isn’t restricted to rural voters. How many times over the past year, after a deep decline in the stock market because of concerns over an impending recession or further damage by the tariffs, has the market rebounded by 200 or 300 points (as it did today), “on hopes of improved chances for trade talks between the US and China”? And these guys are supposed to be financial geniuses.
42
As a city boy, I resent the overweighting of rural interests in US politics. Nebraska has the same number of senators as California, etc. Farmers voted for a president who forces them into bankruptcy and allows Big Agra to take them over. But Big Agra has no voting power. They have to buy senators instead.
The end of this process will be the impoverishment of US small farmers, and mabye only then they'll realize they need "socialist" medical care and other benefits that the Dems suggest, like maybe jobs in alternative power.
The world has many countries--Japan and France for example--where farmers and rural populations have disproportionate representation due to historical factors that no longer apply since populations have moved from rural districts to cities for jobs and culture. Their kids have already left.
Farmers who vote for swindlers like Trump are bankrupting and disempowering themselves. History will move power to where the people actually live. Farmers are only fighting a rearguard action, and they only hope to prolong the historical system so they can live well before they pass into history themselves. No matter how organically they farm, they are not thinkingn of the planet's major populations, or of their kids' future, which will not be lived out on the farm.
12
Other nations are now filling the gap in agriculture created by this administration.
It will be hard to gain this business back in the future .
When this kind of tariffs war was implemented it automatically wiped out the livelihood of many farmers, whose gullibility determined their destiny .
9
As for that question PK posed, "Did anyone really imagine that China, an economic superpower with its own fierce nationalism, wouldn’t retaliate against U.S. tariffs?"
Seems I remember Peter Navarro not only imagined it, but he even said that very thing. Sad.
11
I find it difficult to understand why a country, in particular the USA, whose citizens have immigrant blood coursing through their arteries and veins, has a President who is refusing sanctuary to immigrants. The descendants from the 12 million immigrants who came through Ellis Island and made a home in the USA now total over 100 million. And, additional immigrants were accepted at different ports of entry, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. These immigrants formed the backbone of America. There is no country in the world that has achieved what the USA has economically and militarily. Our success is based on immigrant stock. Immigrants and native Americans built our bridges, tunnels, sky scrapers, the ships we used to fight in the World Wars. The rockets that took mankind to the moon and beyond. The auto's we drive and homes we live in. The hospitals we use when sick and the schools that educate our kids. The farmers that grow our food and breed our cattle. You name it and the success is based on immigrants. I'm at a loss. I just don't understand what happened to the soul of America. A country of the people, by the people and for the people seems to have tunnel vision about how we became great. I'll ask the readers, do you wish for our government to build a wall of exclusion or bridges of friendship and offer a helping hand to immigrants that wish to contribute to keeping our country great.
19
@Richard. Amen, you could say the same of : Women, minorities, seniors, anyone with a possible health problem, LGBT people, in short everyone but the 5% very rich in the USA. So, how did he get elected and how is it he's a good chance to be re-elected?
1
“...they let the will to believe override their judgement” captures the experience of the last election in Tennessee. Republicans had a high achieving Republican run against pro Trumpiest of the Pro-Trumpies.
Senator Blackburn is now ensconced in the Senate without any care for those who sent her there. I own a farm in the middle of her former Congressional District. Watching other farmers vote for her really hurt. There is no accounting for the behavior of lemmings.
25
If all the pain our rural farmers are currently experiencing is considered "winning" by President Trump, I would hate to see what losing looks like.
29
There are two big reasons why the Trump con plays well: we have stopped debating real economic issues and have fallen into a partisan trap that keeps us believing one of two compromised parties will save us.
Both parties are well practiced at pushing cultural and social issues. The almost total absence of real policy initiatives by the parties (not individual candidates) to increase economic opportunity, share prosperity and grow the middle class belies a basic truth: a political process reliant on the largesse of the 1% for political victory will largely serve the donor class. If you are a Democrat, stop pretending this is a Republican only problem. Pelosi and Schumer are brakes upon income equality and fairness. If Democrats promoted real kitchen table solutions, Trump would just be a phony reality TV personality. The New Deal came to prominence via red state farmers, not labor. For decades, voters have been debating issues polled and promoted by the parties and consequently voting against their economic interests for what they perceive as the lesser of two evils. Guns, abortion, voting rights, and assorted other issues have trained voters not to ask how do I make politics and the economy work for me while their kids' generation is the first to do worse than their parents' The system is rotten while we argue which compromised party can reverse the anti-democratic trend. We are trained to revile the other party while putting our common suffering aside.
9
Has the President been busy working on developing new markets to replace the export market for American agricultural products once destined for Chinese consumption that have been lost? No. Has China been busy developing new trade relationships with nations that can take the place of supplying agricultural commodities once dominated by United States sourced products? Yes.
The are plenty of naturally occurring variables that can potentially destroy the best efforts of experienced producers. Heaping on the extra variability of trade wars can overwhelm. What to grow, how much to grow, the care, tending and harvesting all depend on an outcome that will match up profitably to the demand. You must make those calls a year ahead of time. Taking one for the cause for a season, maybe? Two seasons? Three? The export opportunities for American agriculture are being realigned in a way that will quite likely be permanent. The new norm.
6
We really need to parse and rethink the term, 'Farmers.' What we have today is agribusiness, sometimes with growers feeding into the overall market, with Roundup sprayed 'crops' grown on land that is in fact leased and contracted to mega-businesses that have zero connection to what we collectively think as 'farming.'
While farming is a business, Monsanto et al is not a farming enterprise. I try to buy my food from actual farmers. I grew up with actual farmers. We need to realize that language, that words, matter. Just because some person rides a mega machine around on thousands of leased acres does not make that person a farmer. That person is an employee and most probably a contractor. Farming is hard work, done at the personal level. And it is fraught with uncertainty all the time.
Please define what a farmer is before talking about food production and production of crops that can be turned into fuel. The latter is just another form of mining.
13
When I look back at the farm kids in my high school class in Iowa in the 60s they were among the smartest, honor roll students. They went on to be college graduates in agriculture and then back to the farm. Now they are running hugely successful farms, ranches and farm corporations. They were then and are now smart and successful. Exemplary people. Articles like this denigrate them.
7
Part of what you mention is mentioned elsewhere. They were bright, earnest however all they did was study agriculture at the university and did not broaden their minds. I would love to take a look at their bookshelves and their radio dial settings in the $60,000 pickup. Let me guess - Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Savage et al.
2
@JB
Please elaborate. Denigrate them because the article paints an untrue picture or denigrates them because it points out what they are actually doing, which is embarrassing? Seems to be the latter.
3
@JB how?
1
Stop patronizing farmers. They are well educated business people who control vast swaths of land with their knowledge of plants, machinery, climate, weather and finance. I can not understand their support for trump any more than a financier on Wall Street or a teacher in Phoenix.
Almost our entire Congress voted for war against Iraq because someone said there were weapons of mass destruction; contrary to every objective expert. Explain that.
12
@RonRich
GOP and the military-industrial complex. They love holding hands. And Cheney was their match-maker.
2
It's not just farmers who have been had, they're just the first group to feel the pain. We will all feel economic pain thanks to Trump, the man with soft hands who inherited daddys business. I know plenty of construction workers, farmers, and office workers who supported Trump and all his hate. How they continue to support him is hard to figure.
Having worked for developers like Trump, this story is nothing new and has a bad ending. We will be left holding the bag and Trump will create a recession, buy at the low point, and come out roses. It's what rich people do.
9
American farming is a catastrophe for the world.
The intensive mono culture is a threat to the eco system and uses a quantity of fertilizers and pesticides that pollute the earth without remedy.
A study published in Europe yesterday concludes that between 1994 and 2014 ( 20 years ) the toxicity of US produced pesticides has multiplied by 50. Killing bees and other polinisators. 30 % of birds have disappeared.
Of course it is not in the US press.
And the American agricultural industry exporst fertilizers and pesticides all over the world.
Americans have absolutely no ecological conscience.
They are destroying the planet. Then they also export their bad food. cereals, meat, etc...Fast food, soda drinks who represent another health catastrophe.
teenagers in France are for 25 % obese now , which had never existed before.
Mc Donalds has its second cilentele in France after the USA .
And cheats to pay zero taxes. ( of course - like all the US corporations in Europe )
8
When horse racing went downhill in the ‘80s, Arab oil sheiks bought up failing Kentucky thoroughbred breeding farms, because they admire fast horses. What group is sitting on cash reserves now, ready to buy up bankrupt farms? Chinese financiers? Chinese ag-Import specialists?
5
The farmers voted for Trump, and will reap what they sowed until they wake up. In the meantime, Trump will pay them off, effectively nationalizing their farms. Socialism, and they will embrace it.
13
The real America began in coastal cities and small communities in the 1600s. Coastal cities had the first news from England and Europe. John Adams was a gentleman farmer, lawyer, scholar. Jefferson was a gentleman farmer, lawyer, early agricultural researcher, architect. Washington was a gentleman farmer, surveyor, military leader. Four were doctors - Benjamin rush, Lyman Hall, Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton. Please. I applaud farmers for their tenacity in the face of nature. But the real America is anyone who holds these truths to be self evident - life, liberty, happiness. Freedom above all but, not license to do as we please. that is trump. empty egomaniac.
3
I remember reading an article about con artists and their victims not long after the 2016 election. The topic of the article was the extreme reluctance of victims of con artists to believe that they had been had. Even after their savings had vanished, many continued to believe years later that something unexpected must have happened and that 'nice young man' (or whoever) would be back with their savings and an apology any day now.
Politically, it was absolutely chilling. Because a good 40% of America has been had and no one wants to admit they've been taken for a sucker. I think they'll go down with the ship before they admit they were wrong. And that goes double for farmers.
50
Mark Twain said: “It is easier to fool people than it is to convince people they’ve been fooled.”
3
" Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them. So they convinced themselves that he knew what he was doing, that he would win his trade war and that they would be among the victors sharing the spoils."
God bless the farmers but these rural rubes that "shared their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them." actually fell for the man who IS an "urban elite" !! From NYC, no less !! We are all suffering in the pain that Trump's tariffs are causing but when are these farmers in flyover America going to realize they brought on their own scorched earth problems?
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in America anymore."
5
I dislike calling our farmers “rubes” but that is how they act when they refuse to educate themselves on how trump is mis-treating them.
6
When farmers don't think beyond believing Trump's propaganda that China's trade is all bad, so bring on the tariff wars, they're shooting themselves in the foot - they're just endorsing Trump's "I do love the uneducated". The buck stops with you folks. THINK!!
As the Turkish proverb says: "The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe as its handle was made of wood and they thought it was one of them".
9
I’ve never thought of Trump’s core values in such stark terms, but you nailed it, Professor Krugman.
“Protectionism is right up there with racism and anti-environmentalism as one of his core values,” you wrote.
But don’t forget sexism, one-way loyalty, me-first selfishness, and contempt for the poor — the deserve-to be-poor, as he might say. (“Let them eat paper towels!”)
People say Donald Trump is a man without values, but I think you’re showing us that’s just not true. His values aren’t American, and they aren’t Christian, but they’re powerful guides in his life.
6
First, Iowa and California have the same number of Senators, but we all know that the real issue is the number of electoral votes and House members. Iowa has 8 electoral votes for 3.2 million people. Thus, over 2 electoral votes per million. In contrast, California has 55 electoral votes for 40 million. So just over one vote per million. This is clearly a problem. It is a little better with the House, where Iowa gets 4 House members and California gets 53.
Second, while there are definitely farmers that voted for Trump, I also know some farmers who do quite well that did not vote for Trump. This trade war is horrible for them, but they did not ask for it. They saw through the GOP from the beginning and know that the GOP has hijacked the Heartland through fear driven by Faux News. To be a good farmer and rancher you need to be smart. The GOP didn't fool them all.
14
This isn't just Trump. This is Republican policy.
The welfare king farmers must love the free handouts or else they wouldn't support the republicans.
3
Farmers are no better or worse than anyone else. They cling (and many let them) to this notion that they are somehow more authentic and "hard working" than someone who works at a job in "the city." They are not.
I am tired of this mythologizing of the farmer. If it's what you chose to do, do it. When times are hard, deal with it. But do not act as if your fellow citizens are somehow less because they don't tread in mud and manure each day.
8
So farmers complain coastal elites think they're rubes - well who was it who got the idea that a New York City developer and landlord was someone they should trust?
18
The Republicans always have a bogey man. When Obama was President they told doctors he was going after their livelihood. It was not true but many believed it. Republicans love to think they are the only people that work hard and Dems want to takes the fruits of their labor. In reality it is the rent seeking corporations that are the takers—members of the elite conservatives. Sad!!
9
Count on the farmers, along with Trump’s many other “marks,” to ride it out until the bloody end. No one likes admitting that they’ve been conned, and rural people are extremely proud. They also cling to the idea that their way of life is the best, and that those nasty coastal elites (who underwrite the financial blockbuster known as the Farm Bill) are all corrupt, and perhaps even evil. When and if they do wake up from their fever dream, it’ll get even uglier than it is already. Rather than blaming themselves for being conned, or Trump and the GOP for conning them, they’ll find another scapegoat. And by the way, Paul, agriculture in the US would collapse without immigrant labor. Just look at all those folks who got deported from rural Mississippi. They sure weren’t making cars or designing websites. The ironies multiply.
7
For me, it is inexplicable that farmers, with their reputation for religiosity, venerable values, and moral rectitude, whether actually fully deserved or not, would even be initially attracted to a New York amoral degenerate. How? Why? I guess that’s where Trump’s well practiced conning “expertise” comes in.
9
"In short, farmers’ support for Trump should be seen as a form of affinity fraud, in which people fall for a con man whom they imagine to be someone like them."
I heard a radio interview once in which a plaid-flannel-shirted, truck-driving, blue-collar Trump voter from Kentucky explained his support to the reporter thusly:
"Well, I'm a reg'lar, plain-spoken guy, and I feel like that he's just like me."
So...
1. Did this man not notice that Trump has never been a plaid-flannel-shirted, truck-driving, blue collar guy, and that his blustery idiocy is something other than plain-spokenness?
2. "...I feel like that he's just like me."
So when that man looks in the mirror, does he think HE could be president? Because I know I don't want a president just like me!
People (most of them NOT from where Trump built his ridiculous reputation) wanted Trump to be who they hoped he was, and overlooked plentiful evidence to the contrary. Now it's time to pay the piper, and unfortunately for them, they're first in line.
I hope most of them see the situation for what it is, realize that they've been taken advantage of, and vote differently next time. Most of them are lifelong Republicans. I hope some candidates campaign in their areas, because they need to be convinced that they can safely vote for a Democrat.
10
One of the characteristics of fraud victims is that once the fraud has been exposed they keep believing in parts of it not directly connected to their loss.
6
Maybe it's something else.
Graph #2 in this Econ Policy Institute study (bit.ly/EPI-study)
shows that from 1945 to 72 GNP went up 100% & the median (meaning everone's) wage in lock step w/ it. Since 72 GNP has gone up 150% but the median wage has been flat. As some workers pay has gone up (health/tech) & some in good unions (7%) floated we can assume the broad majority of workers wages have been declining: 47+ years of declining expectations for a majority of American workers especially those in rural areas in an economy that has grown 150%.
Thus the opioid crisis, proto-fascism & Trump.
You can't have a 47 year trend of flat wages w/out complicity of elites in both parties. For Dems that's neolibs w/ bankster ties like Hillary with no appeal to workers/farmers.
Many working class live in rural areas. A big family can't all go into farming. The rest need jobs. The economy as is favors the <1%. Everyone but elites resent this.
Midwest overall favored Bernie, including Iowa (& Kansas!) a virtual tie +6 coin flips that all fell for Hillary. (Hillary won in the south none of which voted for her in the general). Still she could have won had she selected Bernie as her VP. I guess she rather Trump win then give progressives a seat at the table.
Trump had no problems talking working class concerns even tho he lied. As one autoworker stated he did more for them than anyone in ages simply by bringing up their situation vis-a-vis globalism. NeoLibs can't win. Progressives can.
1
Excellent analysis. I was never a Bernie fan, but there’s no question Hilary cozied up to bankers... Small farmers are in crisis in part because of what I consider predatory lenders. Terribly high suicide rates in farm country, and much of it due to the despair of debt. I’m flabbergasted by dismissive comments elsewhere about how hard farmers work— most people in cities have no idea. That plus a culture of self-reliance plus sparse mental health care means farmers and rural people are in a perfect storm of pressure. There are major agricultural companies who are making billions off subsidies, but many farmers are harshly squeezed. Your analysis that neoliberal Dems aren’t really listening (probably making things worse) is spot on.
1
How about we go back to rule where state taxes and taxes collected by each revenue fund their own infrastructure..
Let's see how Dakota's and Alabama fund their roads..
1
I suspect when Trump appointed Sonny Perdue to office, he thought he was connected with Perdue Farms (he's not although he was a vet). It was like appointing Rick Perry to the Department of Energy, thinking it had to do with oil wells instead of nuclear energy.
Perdue as governor of Georgia was corrupt and even fired the state ethics chief over an investigation. He met not that long ago with a corrupt Brazilian meatpacking plant that was illegally collecting millions from the US farmer bailouts and a corrupt Japanese company also benefited. Both the Brazilian and Japanese firms had previously been investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
So the fraud targeting the farmers had a henchman already in place. Forcing all the scientists to move seems to have been timed to do more damage in the future.
6
US farmers and UK Brexiteers have much in common. Both fell for a con but will never admit it. They are getting what they voted for but not what they thought they will get.
3
It is mind boggling that these people continue to support the liar in chief despite clearly acting against their best interest. Before tRump, farmers had access to huge markets in China, now those are lost, and won’t come back if this absurd trade war ever ends. And they lost the cheap and only labor pool they had with immigrants. A double whammy . So why’d they do it ? Fear of others stoked by the con man. Once the socialized bailout dries up, they will lose the farm, and no one will be sympathetic.
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And of course these farmers who excoriate “welfare queens” and others on “welfare “ are all slipping at the trough Trump has given them to soothe the pain. Hypocrites.
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Trump's profound lack of strategic thought may hobble the farming of our nation leading to mass starvation along with a lack of health care and high drug prices. This is how the world ends, ignorantly.
I watched a video on another site of a farmer talking about Trump's tariffs killing him, then he sort of defended him (probably cause he hates the same people as Trump). He then climbs up in a John Deere 8270 R (270 HP) which is probably close to a six figure price tag. He was pulling a 20 foot bushhog on the flattest ground I've ever seen.
So I'm thinking that's like needing a Ferrari for running down to the local Wal-Mart on Sundays! I think this guy has the same problems/mindset as Trump!!
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