There is not another group in America who has suffered more as a singularly direct result of Trumpenomics than Wisconsin family farmers. It is as though Trump and his tariff toadies, Peter Navarro, Larry Kudlow et al., get up daily and think “how can we screw those cheeseheads today?” Every bluster, every dictat, every impulsive declaration seems to come at the expense of the very voters most responsible for the 2016 election victory Trump never tires of rehashing in excruciatingly narcissistic detail. But like an abusive spouse, this Administration has constantly damaged Wisconsin’s dairy interests abroad, even as he swears they are the darling of his arbitrary tariff regimes. The numbers don’t lie.
In 2019 Wisconsin reported 48 farm bankruptcies, tops in the nation with most all small generations-old family outfits. Cheese exports, a Wisconsin niche, were down 14 % in 2018. Data from 2019 will surely punctuate that trend. Things have become so bad the US Department of Agriculture has made $2.3 million available for no other purpose than to combat the devastating emotional toll economic failure has wrecked, literally suicide prevention.
Last year one local cheese company executive made a doomsday prediction that, should export market conditions worsen, “I could see us getting to the point where we’re dumping our milk in the fields…. It’ll be a big ripple effect through the state.” Most agree that reckoning has arrived.
Reciprocity, the cornerstone of international trade relationships, assures that any protectionist inclinations by one partner will be met in kind by the other, toward a sector of their choosing. Moreover, markets are dynamic and don’t pause long for uncertainty; if one opportunity seems unreliable for long, other relationships will be pursued to reassert the balance. And it’s business… nothing personal. Unfortunately for them, Wisconsin’s farmers are favored pawns in Trump’s mindless attempts to bully concessions out of trade partners for interests that couldn’t be further from a failing dairyman’s dinner table.
The original North American Free Trade Agreement benefitted dairy interests, establishing new markets in Mexico and reinforcing advantages in Canada. Indeed, by 2016, when Trump was in Wisconsin calling the pact, “the worst deal ever signed,” Mexico had become the largest importer of American cheese products. Why a dairy farmer would enthusiastically vote for a candidate promising to tear up an arrangement fully benefitting his principle prospects is not near as mysterious as why he would promise to vote for the same pol after the pledge was carried out along with a plethora of other actions with similarly ruinous consequences. Yet and still, there it is.
As with everything else, White House messaging about family farm interests is fully conflicted. Trump never fails to mention at his rallies how “we love our family farmers and will always be there for them.” However, Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Purdue, the best friend corporate pork interests ever had, has been delivering an entirely different message lately. For example, last October, attending Wisconsin’s World Dairy Expo, Purdue offered blunt conclusions to those who embraced Trump in 2016:
“In America, the big get bigger and the small go out…..I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.”
It’s hard to imagine a clearer declaration of Trumpian priorities. The big dogs are going to hunt and the bones they leave just might not be enough… sorry Charley.
Last week, as the President was signing his USMCA – NAFTA’s replacement, which, except for a significantly larger big-money foot print, bears an uncanny resemblance to the deal it replaced – Wisconsin’s family farmers were holding out hope milk prices would rise and export opportunities would re-emerge. Even so, most are getting up even earlier and desperately plowing tracts of their land to grow soybeans and other crops in an effort to diversify. Of course, Trump’s trade war with China has blown up those markets as well. MAGA wing and prayers don’t offer much.
Near two years ago, as the first waves of Trump’s arbitrary tariff trouble started washing up on Lake Superior’s shores, the $64,000 question was whether rural America would permit the euphoria full liberation of their cultural resentments provided to sufficiently assuage the personal ruin MAGA economic idiocy would inflict. Today, as GOP Senate conduct crystallizes that our democracy is every bit as imperiled as Wisconsin family dairy farmers, and it’s clear our future will be decided this November, the latest polling data isn’t too hopeful.
Wisconsin voters appear as split now as they were when Trump eeked out his plurality in 2016. Since we can assume urban and suburban dissenter ranks have only grown, the polling more than implies Cheese State farmers remain MAGA-fervent. Apparently, sending immigrants packing, reversing Roe v Wade, and generally sticking it to the libs is worth a lot to them…. even generations-old legacies.
Or perhaps, like the blank-eyed Senate Republicans who reflect Trumpism’s grasp on flyover country, there is now simply a dystopian surrender to the futility of fate… a collective throwing up of the hands – “what can you do? He has to know what he’s doing, right? After all, he is a billionaire. Besides, it can’t be worse than the socialism Democrats offer.” Of course, subsidy checks now being cut to fortify farmers’ allegiance are the very essence of socialism, but that apparently complicates the narrative more than this addled and besieged bloc wants to consider. So, whatever the rationalization, it’s Trump or bust. Have some milk with those cookies! BC
In the time since you wrote this, Trump announced a new package of farm subsidies to ameliorate the damage from the trade war. However, it’s worth noting that it’s now totaling twice the cost of the auto industry bailout that Republicans howled about ten years ago (and all of which I believe was paid back).