It must really suck for Kentuckians who are getting hurt by Trump’s tariffs that they do not have two Republican U.S. Senators to fight for them on Capitol Hill.
“Nobody wants a trade war,” McConnell said in a July 13 news conference on the steps of the Gene Snyder U.S. Courthouse in Louisville.
But while McConnell voted for a non-binding resolution calling for additional congressional oversight on tariffs, he opposed a bill that would have reined in Trump’s tariff authority.
"We're not going to be, in the Senate, passing a bill preventing the president from what he can legally do under current law," McConnell told Fox News. On Sirius XM, The Hill reported, McConnell said such legislation would be an "exercise in futility."
And as for Putin’s little buddy and Trump’s new best friend Rand Paul:
“If tariffs punish farmers,” Sen. Rand Paul tweeted July 24, “the answer is not welfare for farmers – the answer is to remove the tariffs."
And Senator Rand Paul? What do you propose to do about it? Deafening silence.
But Trump’s tariffs can’t be THAT bad for Kentuckians. Right? Trump’s tariffs are the greatest!
But don’t tell that to Ryan Bivens and his wife Misty, who grow soybeans on 3,000 acres in Kentucky's LaRue and Hardin counties.
They stand to lose as much as $400,000 this year as a result of the tit-for-tat trade war in which China, responding to U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, has retaliated with levies of its own on $44.9 billion worth of U.S. goods – including soybeans.
What’s $400,000 to a farmer? It’s peanuts I imagine. So what if a few soybean farmers lose some money? It’s not like the tariffs are going to hit a lot of other Kentucky industries.
The exact cost of the ongoing trade war to Kentucky has yet to be calculated. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says the total value of exports from Kentucky at risk from retaliatory tariffs is $1.535 billion and involves 539,000 jobs. The exports include everything from aluminum waste and bourbon to postcards and steel tanks.
Ummmm… Sounds like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which we all know has the best interest of American workers and consumers at heart, is not very happy with Trump’s tariffs. Still, I feel certain that Tea Party Governor Matt Bevin is working hard to mitigate the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs.
With the impact of tariffs mixed in Kentucky, the Bevin administration has stayed on the sidelines.
Well, I feel better now.