Trump’s Agricultural “Plan”
It was easy to predict that Trump’s first term agricultural policy would be a mess. It could not have been better designed to collapse from its own contradictions.
It was not simply a matter of incompetent implementation, although that was bountiful. True that Trump’s plan to “take on China” and other U.S. trade partners was run with all the skill of a methed-up body builder who could not read music trying to play piano for the first time with a sheet of Liszt’s “La Campanella” sitting in front of him.
Fundamentally, however, Trump’s trade ideas failed to take into account the need of U.S. Big Ag capital to export commodities. Going back a generation, in return for allowing importation of cheap foreign-manufactured goods, U.S. policy-makers ask for a trade-off of opening up foreign markets to U.S. domestic agricultural surplus production. As this writer wrote for this group literally one day into the Trump administration (www.dailykos.com/...):
The Republican Platform strongly supports agriculture exports. It can be expected that East Asian export markets for U.S. grain, as well as Mexico, will hold out this issue over Trump’s head in any future re-negotiations or threats of trade tariff wars.
Trump had to respond to agricultural demand reduction created by his own reckless trade warring. He came up with God and guns for the grunts, and gutting and gravy for the grands.
The "God, guns" part should not be forgotten but neither should it be overestimated. In terms of its value to keep rural America in Trump’s camp, cultural hegemony is necessary but not sufficient. Working class rural Americans are in varying stages of desperation. Had it not been for just enough money in direct payments to working class rural whites, coupled with some Big Ag money trickling down from the rural grands, made possible by Trump's socialism for the rich, much of rural America would probably be in open rebellion to Trump by now, cultural issues notwithstanding.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, these payments, which include cash grants sent out under various farm programs, but not loans or crop insurance payments, will hit $37.2 billion this year. That is up 66% from 2019, when the $22.5 billion paid to farmers was already more than double the $9.8 billion paid as recently as 2014. Though some of the 2020 increase is tied to the coronavirus pandemic, critics accuse Trump of using massive handouts from the federal Treasury to try to buy the continued affection of farmers — and their votes.
Still, it is easy to overlook that, perhaps more important than how they assess their finances, large numbers of the mostly white and conservative farmers associate Trump and Republicans with the values they embrace and Joe Biden and the Democrats with Black Lives Matter and the urban unrest they fear and mistrust.
(www.freep.com/...)
Biden’s Response
Biden is to be complimented for having an in some ways robust plan for rural America, as opposed to a more narrowly focused plan directed to the agriculture sector per se (joebiden.com/...). Much of rural America resides near but doesn’t work on a farm. Continuing a centuries long trend, conventional farming is less and less labor-intensive. Yet not everyone no longer working in farming moves to town much less city. Many of these folks were and are unemployed, underemployed, or otherwise struggling ripe pickings for a demagogue.
Even were healthy democracy in place, which it clearly is not, dialectical tension does not necessarily generate positive policy development. I will likely receive criticism when I cynically but realistically note that the first duty of Biden is to get elected in an imperfect electoral system during perilous times. Thus, he cannot divorce himself from the difficulty of overcoming an unprincipled fascist who will, for instance, blithely support ethanol subsidies despite a host of right wing think tanks (not to mention liberal and left ones) decrying these.
It is therefore not surprising that maintaining ethanol subsidies is a key component of Biden’s response. To this extent, quotation marks could be placed around “response,” since this is by now virtually a quintessential status quo measure. At a minimum, ethanol is to commodity corn farmers as fracking is to many rural landowners in oil and gas country, neither sustainable but both ultimately dangerous addictions that cannot be easily overcome in a financial capitalist political-economy with a sophisticated system of divide and rule.
It is with respect to an agenda of emphasizing the promotion of Big Ag exports that Biden’s response to me most clearly, even in the short term, fails the electorate, and unnecessarily so.
- Pursuing a trade policy that works for American farmers. More than 20% of all crops grown and products raised in the United States are exported, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs and helping to stabilize farm income. But America’s farmers and rural communities have paid a heavy price for President Trump’s tariffs. While Trump is pursuing a damaging and erratic trade war without any real strategy, President Biden will stand up to China by working with our allies to negotiate from the strongest possible position. And, he’ll make sure our trade policy works for American farmers.
There arguably should be hanging over Chinese manufacturers the threat of a phased-in, democratically-managed smart U.S. trade war with China. But the goal should be saving the planet’s climate, not increasing U.S. agricultural commodity exports. Coal-fired power generation subsidizes using the atmosphere manufacturers who use this source of power and then send the widgets to a Walmart near you and me. A morally-sound trade policy could help U.S. domestic manufacturing, to the extent it adopts climate-friendly manufacturing techniques.
Moreover, most of the rural component of the electorate is certainly not begging for a return of pre-Trump agricultural trends.
Biden’s rural advisers, with deep ties to corporate agriculture, have advocates for family farmers concerned. They cite in particular the influence of former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, now a lobbyist for the dairy industry, and former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, whose new organization One Country claims to speak for rural America. “The Biden team has too few voices in their ear claiming to represent rural and ag issues,” says Joe Maxwell, president of Family Farm Action and a leading critic of Big Ag monopolies.
At the heart of the dispute is a conception of how to revitalize rural America. Business-friendly ag advisers emphasize trade, believing that promoting overseas markets will translate to prosperity for family farmers and ranchers. But “farmers do not export, Cargill exports,” Maxwell counters, arguing that Big Ag domination is a far greater challenge. If you don’t profit from what you produce, he reasons, more trade won’t fix the problem.
(prospect.org/...)
Please see this piece for ideas on a progressively socialist farm policy that places human beings, not corporations and capital accumulation needs, at the center: www.dailykos.com/...