Farmers Stick With Trump, Despite Trade-War Pain

[question everything]

About two months into the Trump presidency, Ron Prestage clutched a shovel and grinned at a photographer on an Iowa cornfield. He had $309 million riding on 160 acres near the town of Eagle Grove, the site of a future pork plant that would help his family’s company, Prestage Farms Inc., tap surging U.S. exports.

Just weeks after bulldozers began rolling, though, President Trump came within a pen stroke of upending Mr. Prestage’s plans, preparing to announce the termination of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trade battles with Mexico, Canada and China that followed cut into pork-producer profits in a three-year roller-coaster ride that threatened the Prestage family’s biggest-ever investment. “He’s made things more volatile, with the saber-rattling,” said Mr. Prestage, 65. “It does create a lot of angst and concern about, ‘Oh my God, what is he doing?’ ”

Yet Mr. Prestage plans to vote for Mr. Trump, as he did in 2016. He and many other farmers say they believe a Biden presidency would bring stricter environmental regulations and higher taxes, among other concerns. Many are in competitive Midwestern states that might tip the election. A September poll by agricultural publication Farm Futures found 75% of farmers surveyed in July planned to vote for Mr. Trump, compared with 72.6% ahead of the 2016 election.

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Some farmers say Mr. Biden would be a welcome change, including Chris Petersen, 65, who raises hogs near Clear Lake, Iowa. Mr. Trump’s trade moves, he said, will drive importers like China toward producers such as Brazil or Ukraine. He feels USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue caters more to big farming operations over small ones.

Under a Biden administration, Mr. Petersen said, farmers would have a better shot at fair treatment by big agribusinesses, and rural America would have better access to health care. As for Mr. Trump, he said, “The farmers have gotten taken to the cleaners by his policies.”

His fellow Midwest farmers mostly side with Mr. Trump. About 82% of Iowa farmers in a September poll by agriculture-industry publisher Farm Journal Inc. said they intended to vote for Mr. Trump and 12% for Mr. Biden; in a 2016 Farm Journal poll, 84% planned to vote for Mr. Trump, 6% for Hillary Clinton .

More..

https://www.wsj.com/articles/farmers-election-trump-biden-trade-war-11602693377 (subscription)

[33taw]

1. Guns and Abortion.

[TheRealNorth]

2. The farmers have been getting plenty of welfare money

So Trump has already bought them.

[SharonClark]

3. Trump paid off upper Midwest farmers with

massive subsidies. They like his welfare state that benefits red states.

[Walleye]

8. But don't you dare raise taxes

[question everything]

10. And yet, they are supposed to promote self reliance, rewarded by working hard

some of the recent Lincoln Project images

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100214335147

[pwb]

4. Trump gave them a lot of our money for that attitude.

Think I will eat less.

[Squidly]

5. They have been voting against their own interests since RayGun

I just dont get it.

[Walleye]

6. " thank you sir, may I have another?"

[SWBTATTReg]

7. So, how many farms have disappeared over the last four years under trump? I bet quite a few.

Go ahead, support the PINO moron. It's hasn't done a damn thing for you and you all deserve him. Traitors.

[kimbutgar]

9. It was reported that the farmers who got most welfare were in red areas of Iowa by ,85%

And only 15% of areas that voted for Hillary got money. They targeted the aid for politicial. advantage.

So one couLd say the 85% of the farmers receiving aid were welfare whores. They should be taxed for that money as income.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Modern farmers aren't the shoeless hayseeds we thought about for years...

Planning a $300 million plant means you know a lot more about finance, production and markets than your average MBA. But, they still think like your typical wildcatter.

I'm thinking they're betting trade wars will pass by a lot sooner than environmental restrictions like water consumption and and pigshit pits will.

[Newest Reality]

12. They don't even get how they are being played, as well.

It's so very Dunning-Kruger and Trump knows that.

If they ever got an inkling of what suckers they are and how easily they are to manipulate they would be really so ashamed that they wouldn't be able to admit it. And I say that in light of their prejudices and such. They have many of them and he appeals to that, of course, for a reason.

In other countries and other times, they would have reacted by pulling him out of his stronghold and...well, you know. Nooses and guillotines were remedies for that realization.