Red state farmers hurt American consumers by supporting Trump

Get the Point!

Back in the day, both of my parents used to love the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face” when describing defiant actions that folks take to their own detriment.

I've been thinking about that phrase quite a bit since Inauguration Day last month as hardly a day goes by where someone or some group that voted for Donald Trump—for any number of reasons—now have some level of “buyer's remorse” when realizing that they may have made an unwise decision at the ballot box last November.

Whether it's been those “Latinos for Trump” who have found themselves or their loved ones rounded up and deported; or, those “Palestinian-Americans for Trump” who now know that Trump isn't interested in a Palestinian nation, but wants all Palestinians removed from Gaza so that he can develop the strip as the “Riviera of the Middle East;” or, those “Blacks for Trump” who somehow thought that all of Marmalade Mephistopheles’s promises to “stop Woke” and “eliminate DEI” initiatives didn’t mean that their Federal “Black jobs” and contracts were in jeopardy, too, truly, many of these ones are now realizing that in supporting Trump—they cut off their noses to spite their faces!

This gradual recognition isn't just limited to people of color; many lower income whites in Trump's red state base are starting to realize that their loyal love for Trump is seriously unrequited! While the Fox “News” dependent MAGAs have laughed and had quite the time “owning the libs” as Trump and his de facto boss, Elon Musk, have taken a razor sharp scythe to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) program that they blame for wasteful spending in the name of worldwide humanitarian relief, few of those in the Trump peanut gallery stopped to realize just how dependent red state farmers—mostly white males and overwhelmingly MAGA—are now slated to lose their lucrative subsidies and contracts with USAID to provide food and commodities internationally!

Farmers in red states voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump…

According to journalist Tim Carpenter of the Kansas Reflector, “USAID buys about $2 billion in U.S. agricultural products a year, and farmers are already struggling with rising costs, low prices, and concern with tariffs.” This has caused concern among red state MAGA politicians like Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) who said last week, “Food stability is essential to political stability, and our food aid programs help feed the hungry, bolster our national security and provide an important market for our farmers, especially when commodity prices are low.”

Yeah, I hear you Sen. Moran, but clearly you didn't hear or, having heard, didn't understand that Donald Trump was serious about exacting tariffs and pursuing his “America First” agenda that in removing relief programs for poor people worldwide, would add to poverty rates right here at home—even among his loyal (albeit politically naive) base!

Over the past decade I've found it solipsistic (and racist) how Trump and his media supporters continuously use Black and brown faces as their poster models for Federal assistance when the reality is that whites, overwhelmingly, are not just the numerical majority on public assistance welfare rolls—but whites like Elon Musk and his Space X business, for example, are the numerical majority on corporate welfare assistance rolls as well! To this point, when you take a look at the top 15 states with the most Federal farm subsidies distributed from 1995 to 2021 per the Department of Agriculture, 11 of the 15 are reliably red MAGA states with a 12th, typically blue Wisconsin, having swung in the red column for Trump last Fall:

1. Texas ($44.5 billion)

2. Iowa ($39. 6 billion)

3. Illinois ($32.7 billion)

4. Minnesota ($28.1 billion)

5. Kansas ($27.7 billion)

6. Nebraska ($27 billion)

7. North Dakota ($26.6 billion)

8. South Dakota ($21 billion)

9. Missouri ($17.4 billion)

10. Indiana ($16.5 billion)

11. California ($16.3 billion)

12. Arkansas ($15.9 billion)

13. Ohio ($12.8 billion)

14. Wisconsin ($11.7 billion)

15. Oklahoma ($11.5 billion).

Cognizant that USAID isn't dead yet, what with Trump appointed U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols issuing a temporary restraining order just yesterday to halt the employee purge and financial freezes at the agency while lawyers for the Trump administration and the blue state attorneys general brief the court further on the facts and the law, perhaps the financial faucets will be turned back on and farmers in all states can work knowing that they will get paid?

But lest we forget that a temporary restraining order does not automatically signal that a permanent one will be rendered, meaning, USAID’s days still could be numbered and if they are, the domino effect of tariffs, plus farmers unable to subsist and meet American food demands will mean food shortages and higher prices for ALL Americans. And if you ask me, that's a miserable price for ALL of us to pay simply because a great many MAGA minions let the bigoted biases in their small hearts cloud the basic level of financial judgment in their even smaller minds!