this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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One thing that I haven't been able to work out is that Trump has pretty solid support from rural areas. That means that farmers are a political factor.
But I've seen probably three different policies at least that look like they've got a lot of potential to be disadvantageous to agribusiness:
Trade wars. Okay, it might just be to benefit manufacturing workers, that that's more critical, but typically starting spats results in restrictions being based on US agricultural exports in response, which is bad for American farmers.
This credit pause on federal loans. It looks like that's been blocked already. Maybe it was political theater, done with the expectation of being blocked -- I don't have the familiarity to say how certain that was. But I suspect that farm loans would likely have been affected, as they aren't individual aid.
Free school lunches and food stamps are basically a political deal struck to provide subsidies to agribusiness. My understanding from past reading is that subsidies to crop insurance used to be a more-important route, but that farmers lost enough political clout that they couldn't get the subsidies alone.
Illegal immigration provides a lot of manual labor that's important for farming.
Now, okay. People don't always vote for their personal financial advantage. I remember that in the UK, there was a good deal of discussion about farmers supporting Brexit, despite the fact that in general, Brexit was not expected to be a good idea for famers. And it didn't work out well:
https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/eu-referendum/analysis-7-years-after-brexit-farmers-count-the-cost
The British farm industry association NFU did oppose Brexit, and I'd expect them to take a position based on economic impact. It's possible that individual farmers hadn't familiarized themselves with the economic implications.
This says that the Farm Bureau, a US industry association, is favorable towards Trump, though it does highlight some concerns (including the illegal immigrants issue and trade war risks):
https://www.capitalpress.com/nation_world/despite-optimism-about-trump-some-policies-trouble-farm-bureau/article_5c781052-dc41-11ef-83cb-23c4d7a5d43a.html
So I don't think that it's just not running the numbers.
Trump doesn't really care about support any more because he's already won and likely won't be able to run again.
So supporting those who fell for his bullshit? Yeah not happening
There will be no more elections if they stick to the program.