Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
American farmers are being pushed to the brink by government policies. Most have had enough of the trade war and are increasingly becoming impatient with their financial instability and worsening regulatory burdens placed on their backs.
Bankruptcies are skyrocketing, food prices are expected to soar, and American farmers are losing patience with their inability to keep up. For the most part, farmers have stood behind president Donald Trump’s mission to get a better trade deal with China. One that addresses long-standing issues with what they say are “unfair trading practices,” however, they now seem to be in the crosshairs of the feud.
After weeks of optimistic statements by Trump and members of his administration about how trade talks were progressing, Trump abruptly escalated tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods last week and opened the door to even more. This move prompted Beijing to hit back Monday by raising the tariff rate on $60 billion of US items, according to reporting by CNN.
Some farmers are even saying Trump now “owes” them a solution to the problems they face because of his policies.
“The President of the United States owes farmers like myself some type of plan of action,” John Wesley Boyd Jr., a soybean farmer in Baskerville, Virginia, told CNN‘s Brianna Keilar on Monday.
“Farmers were his base. They helped elect this president… and now he’s turning his back on America’s farmers when we need him the most,” he added.
The sad truth is that the woes that farmers have come face to face with will impact every single person who purchases food. We’ll all see fewer products for higher prices with the potential for a full-blown food crisis in the near future. Soybean, corn, and wheat growers have been battling tariffs from China for nearly a year now. Beijing imposed those duties in retaliation to tariffs put on Chinese products by the Trump administration. The tariffs made those American agricultural products more expensive for Chinese importers, and private buyers have mostly stopped buying American-grown soybeans or wheat because of said tariffs.
With no end to this economic disaster in sight, farmers have begun to grow worried and impatient with the Trump administration. Our speculation is that Trump never had a deal with China worked out in the first place. His goal has always been to try to “stick it” to the Chinese, however, in doing so, he’s punishing the American farmer, consumer, and business owner more than the Chinese government. It’s simply not working, and while we understand why Trump started the trade war, it’s hard to understand why he insists on continuing and amplifying it.