The New York Times has a piece out today about the highlights how Trump’s trade war could spell bad news for down-ballot Republicans running in Midwest rural states like North Dakota:
Here in the largest soybean-producing county in the country, a snowy winter has left North Dakota farmers like Robert Runck with time on their hands before spring planting — time they have spent stewing over how much they stand to lose if President Trump starts a trade war with China.
“If he doesn’t understand what he’s doing to the nation by doing what he’s doing, he’s going to be a one-term president, plain and simple,” said Mr. Runck, a fourth-generation farmer who voted for Mr. Trump. Pausing outside the post office in this town of 2,300, Mr. Runck said the repercussions could be more immediate for Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican whose bid against Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, has been complicated by the proposed tariffs.
“If it doesn’t get resolved by election time, I would imagine it would cost Kevin Cramer some votes,” he said.
Stern warnings are coming from all over the Midwest about the political peril for Republicans in Mr. Trump’s recent course of action, in which the tariffs he slapped on foreign competitors invited retaliatory tariffs on American agriculture. Soybeans are America’s second largest export to China, and that country’s proposed 25 percent duties on the crop would hit hardest in states like Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota — where there are highly competitive House races — as well as Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, whose Senate contests may determine control of the chamber.
From the still-thawing soybean fields of North Dakota and Kansas to the corn and pork farms of Iowa, voters across the political spectrum say the president’s attacks on American economic rivals could do grave damage to an already unstable commodities market.
“They’re not in touch with the reality of the Midwest and the impact that the tariffs would have,” said Bart Bergquist, a biology professor and part-time farmer who lives on 10 acres just south of Waterloo, Iowa. Mr. Bergquist, who voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, added that commodities prices had already taken a toll on the area.
“I know my neighbors are not rolling in money — they’re trying to supplement whatever else they can do to keep going,” he said.
While North Dakota farmers are not the ones to benefit from this move, Trump may have helped one vulnerable U.S. Senator benefit from this dumb move:
North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, one of the most endangered Democrats in the U.S. Senate, knows a political gift when she sees one.
President Donald Trump carried her largely rural state by a landslide 36 percentage points in 2016, making her one of the Republicans’ best targets in November’s midterm elections. But Trump’s escalating trade dispute with China would hit farmers hard, giving Heitkamp and other Democrats a rare political opportunity in a region where they have struggled for decades.
“We cannot survive a trade war,” Heitkamp said in a recent interview before an event with women business owners in Jamestown, a city of about 16,000 people in east-central North Dakota. “This kind of disruption to a fragile farm economy is very disturbing.”
Heitkamp, locked in a tight re-election fight with Republican challenger Kevin Cramer, has led Democratic attacks on Trump for ignoring the economic threat to the region’s export-dependent farmers. The trade dispute has set off political alarms across the conservative farm belt, putting Republican candidates on the defensive and complicating the party’s fight to retain control of Congress.
And even local conservative and Republican voices in North Dakota admit Trump may have helped boost Heitkamp’s chances:
Or as Rob Port, a conservative talk radio host and columnist in the state, put it: “This is the perfect issue for her. Her base eats up the Trump bashing, but it’s also an economic argument that’ll have rural Trump voters saying, ‘Maybe blind allegiance to Trump isn’t such a good thing.'”
Heitkamp is already testing out such a message against her rival, Cramer.
“Clearly he sees his role is to be a vote for President Trump in the United States Senate,” she said. “And I believe my role is to be a vote for North Dakota in the United States Senate.”
Cramer, whom Trump repeatedly wooed to run for the Senate, accused his opponent of “hysteria” and said she was overstating what are at this point only trade negotiations.
“People in North Dakota prefer humility to hyperbole, and that kind of hyperbole I don’t think sells very well politically,” he said. “But it’s certainly not good for our farmers or good for our economy.”
But on a local talk radio program, Cramer let slip his frustration with the president’s actions. “He tends to have rather emotional responses,” he said of Trump.
North Dakota is not simply another red state where Democrats are bound for extinction. There is an enduring populist streak here, dating back to its mistrust of distant bankers and millers in Minneapolis, Chicago and New York. To this day, the state retains a state-controlled bank and mill.
“We’re Republicans until it comes to subsidies for farmers,” said George Blank, only half-jokingly, as he sipped coffee with a half-dozen fellow retirees at their daily breakfast-and-bull session in Casselton’s Country Kitchen.
And, Blank noted, “everything drives on ag in this state.”
It’s up to Heitkamp to make this the defining issue of her re-election campaign. She’s already doing that and she needs to keep it. She’s not my favorite Democrat but we have to keep all seats from flipping if we are to achieve a Senate majority this year. Click here if you want to donate and get involved with Heitkamp’s campaign.