The Farmer Takes a Bribe, The Farmer Takes a Bribe...

Hi-ho, the derry-o!
The farmer takes a bribe.

Again.

If you're from around here -- the middle of Middle America -- odds are you might remember 2017 and 2018 as the year Donald Trump fucked over the American farmer.

And as with all Trump-related disasters, it all started with a ridiculous lie told to stupid people  

From The Washington Post, October 24, 2017:

...more than 75 percent of rural voters in the Farm Belt cast their ballots for Trump in the last presidential election. They cheered Trump’s promise to support the Renewable Fuel Standard (which props up the ethanol industry), his pledge to eliminate estate taxes on inherited farmland and roll back regulations on farm runoff, and, most of all, they liked his tough talk on trade policy.

And then...

From the Brookings Institute, August 7, 2020:

Economic costs of the trade war

The trade war caused economic pain on both sides and led to diversion of trade flows away from both China and the United States. As described by Heather Long at the Washington Post, “U.S. economic growth slowed, business investment froze, and companies didn’t hire as many people. Across the nation, a lot of farmers went bankrupt, and the manufacturing and freight transportation sectors have hit lows not seen since the last recession. Trump’s actions amounted to one of the largest tax increases in years.”

A September 2019 study by Moody’s Analytics found that the trade war had already cost the U.S. economy nearly 300,000 jobs and an estimated 0.3% of real GDP. Other studies put the cost to U.S. GDP at about 0.7%. A 2019 report from Bloomberg Economics estimated that the trade war would cost the U.S. economy $316 billion by the end of 2020, while more recent research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University found that U.S. companies lost at least $1.7 trillion in the price of their stocks as a result of U.S. tariffs imposed on imports from China...

In 2020, Trump tried to unshit the bed by signing a trade truce with China which Brookings described as:

In other words, Beijing essentially paid for the deal with a promise of a windfall in purchases of American goods. It appears that President Trump accepted an IOU as a declaration of victory.

But you know what?  It turns out there's a fix for that.

Bribery!  

Specifically, taking tens of billions of your tax dollars and handing it over to farmers who, by substantial majorities, voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and whose livelihood was damn near destroyed by the aforementioned lunatic agricultural trade war Trump started with China.

From Politico, July 14, 2020:

‘Here’s your check’: Trump’s massive payouts to farmers will be hard to pull back

The president was already spending double his predecessor to spare farmers the cost of his trade war. Now the price is reaching unsustainable levels.

Government payments to farmers have surged to historic levels under President Donald Trump as the Agriculture Department floods the industry with cash to stem the financial losses from Trump’s tariff fights and the coronavirus pandemic.

But as agriculture grows more reliant on unprecedented taxpayer support, farm policy experts and watchdog groups warn the subsidies are growing too big and too fast, with no strings attached and little oversight from Congress — and that Washington could have a difficult time shutting off the spigot.

Government payments to farmers have surged to historic levels under President Donald Trump as the Agriculture Department floods the industry with cash to stem the financial losses from Trump’s tariff fights and the coronavirus pandemic.

But as agriculture grows more reliant on unprecedented taxpayer support, farm policy experts and watchdog groups warn the subsidies are growing too big and too fast, with no strings attached and little oversight from Congress — and that Washington could have a difficult time shutting off the spigot...

OK, fine.  On the one hand Trump treated them like whores.  But on the other hand, he did leave the money on the dresser with a generous tip.  

And now, everybody knew where everybody stood..

So, having taken all of that in and begun to flourish again under the Biden administration (From NBC News) --

Farmers flourish under Biden, see recovery from Trump-era trade wars

The prices of corn and soybeans have increased and demand is up for American exports.

...

"We had farm income that was up by a pretty fair amount in 2021, almost to the record level of 2013, but not quite," said Patrick Westhoff, director of the University of Missouri’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. "Part of that, of course, was continuing government payments, but there was a very strong recovery in both crop and livestock prices last year."

Soy and corn prices, two of the largest cash crops in the United States, have suffered slightly, falling below $9 and above $3 a bushel, respectively, during the pandemic. Now, exports have had an increase in demand, in part because of exports to China and poor weather affecting South American producers. Soy was up to $14 in 2021 and corn is projected to continue above $5 in 2022. 

-- have American farmers finally figured out who's actually on their side?  Who's word they can actually trust?

Of course not.  Turns out that 30 years of rural Hate Radio pumping Rush Limbaugh and all his imitators into the skulls American farmers has built them into some of the stupidest, rage-drunk idiots on Earth.

From Investigate Midwest, November 13, 2024 (with emphasis added):

Trump support grew in America’s top farming counties despite first-term trade war

Farming-dependent counties rallied behind Trump with an average of nearly 78% support.

America’s most farming-dependent counties overwhelmingly backed President-elect Donald Trump in this year’s election by an average of 77.7%. 

Trump...increased his support this year among farming-dependent counties by nearly two percentage points compared to 2020. 

Some political observers questioned whether Trump’s support would wane among farmers after his first-term trade war, which led to increased prices and a drop in agricultural exports. During the campaign, Trump promised a return to high tariffs if given a second term. 

“His policies didn’t do us any good; his tariffs didn’t do us any good,” Lance Lillibridge, an Iowa farmer, told Investigate Midwest.  

Not only did Trump increase his support among farming-dependent counties, but more than 100 of those counties supported him with at least 80% of their vote.

And so here we are again, the same thing but different.

From CNBC, April 26, 2025:

Agriculture isn’t nearing trade war tariffs crisis, ‘it is full blown crisis already’ farmers say

The global backlash to President Trump’s tariffs is punishing U.S. agriculture, especially a decline in Chinese buying of U.S. farm products.

A leading agriculture exports group says “massive” losses are already racking up at farms, with cancelled orders, pricing pressure as demand slumps and layoffs, as China stops buying products from pork to hay and straw, and lumber.

“No one can replace all the volume that China buys,” one farm operator reported.

But don't worry kids.  Trump stands ready once again to steal billions of your tax dollars, and hand them over to the same inbred meathead farmers who voted for him.

Again.  

From Axios:

Trump ready to bail out farmers amid trade war squeeze, Rollins says

President Trump is prepared to bail out American farmers if the trade war continues squeezing commodity exports, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Sunday.

Why it matters: Exports of key commodities are plunging, particularly soybean and pork sales to China, threatening tens of billions of dollars in farm income.

I Am The Liberal Media.