As an edge member of the California Farm Bureau (they will let any rabble in, so it's not as special as it may sound) it's been mildly entertaining to watch it slowly dawn on the organization's longstanding conservative Republican leaders, lobbyists and newsletter reporters that the undiluted Republican rule in Washington does not, in fact, give a flying damn about the state's farmers and has been regularly and eagerly boning them at every turn.
The Farm Bureau wanted more lax enforcement of farm labor standards; instead they got a new xenophobic immigration push that has dried up critically important migrant labor. The Farm Bureau wanted tax relief; instead they are the recipients of a new set of tax laws seemingly specifically designed to cripple the state's land-rich but cash-poor farmers. They wanted deregulation; they're getting deregulation that helps other industries screw them. They wanted a fresh round of protectionism; they have gotten an administration shouting to withdraw from the very trade agreements that have been propping many a farm up to begin with.
Watching each edition of the Bureau's forever-conservative newsletter delicately dance around the party's obvious indifference or hostility to farmer needs is, as I said, interesting. And while California farmers have been, by design, seemingly been singled out for punishment by the party's new tax platform and other petty grifts, that same hurt is being felt nationwide.
New analyses of the tax law by economists at the Department of Agriculture suggest it could actually lower farm output in the years to come and effectively raise taxes on the lowest-earning farm households, while delivering large gains for the richest farmers. [...]
A model of the law’s effects on farm households by Siraj G. Bawa and James M. Williamson, of the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, projects that 70 to 80 percent of the law’s benefits will flow to the top 1 percent of farm households by income.
The law actually shrinks tax refunds for the lowest-earning 20 percent of farm households, Mr. Bawa said in a session hosted by the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association. The reason stems from a combination of changes in the bill, including its elimination of a tax break for domestic production.
“The lowest quintile is actually getting a tax raise under this,” Mr. Bawa said.
Yes. Yes indeed, if you are one of those rare beasts known as a farmer who is not fabulously rich, you have once again gotten boned by the same crowd that so loudly promised, yet again, to protect you.
The new tax bill will provide a squeeze, especially here in California, but it is the Trump administration's "trade policies" that pose the most existential threat to American farmers, and while the New York Times piece quotes many figures who have been telling the administration that, there are few expressions of faith that the party will do anything but the wrong thing. Instead we get a few cheap promises of the usual sort:
In his speech to the group, the president is likely to touch on the successful passage of the tax bill and his administration’s initiatives to combat opioid addiction, White House officials said in a briefing on Friday. The White House is also expected to release a report Monday on reviving rural prosperity, which will outline goals for helping rural areas, including expanding high-speed internet, health services, work-force training and the use of biotechnology. The report stems from an executive order Mr. Trump signed in April.
That is weak, weak tea indeed, for an industry suffering its worst downturn since the Great Depression. And it has been bullshit every last time a Republican has said it; the party has taken concrete steps to reduce high-speed internet, reduce rural health services, reduce workforce training and the word biotechnology has hardly been on the lips of anyone. And none of these things have gone unnoticed, in the rural communities suffering from these cuts.
A promise to restore a petty amount of what the party has steadily and gleefully taken from rural communities may have been enough, in past seasons, for lobbyists and farm industry leaders to placate their base, but in the wake of the current dramatic collapse of farm incomes it's not clear that promising near-bankrupt farms better internet streaming is going to do a damn thing.
My own estimation, based on the reading of tea leaves—or root vegetable leaves, as the case may be—is that Republicans may not be able to take farming communities for granted, this next election season. The rhetoric isn't landing the same way; unified Republican rule has brought a new clarity to Republican intent, when it comes to farmers, their needs, and party contempt for those needs, and the usual fluffing of Republican candidates by industry leaders is more obviously halfhearted.
Even for the steady social conservatives of the heartland, losing the family farm due to the actions of grifters and dullards may be too much to abide. There are votes there for Democrats that weren't there before; there is an impatience that Trump-brownnosing rural Republican loyalists may not be able to placate.