America's farmers have generally been a highly conservative force in our politics—at least in the last couple decades. But that wasn't always the case in American history—and it might not be the case much longer, as they find themselves increasingly squeezed within the vise of Trump's trade policies.
Trump's tariffs are the worst possible trap for people trying to make a living by farming crops for export. On the one hand—these taxes on imports drastically raise the cost of farm equipment; and on the other—they invite retaliatory trade barriers from other countries blocking U.S.-grown food staples.
Indeed, the New York Times reported yesterday that farmers are already feeling these effects.
Demand for John Deere products (supposedly the kind of domestic manufacturer that was going to benefit most from Trump's tariffs) has fallen off a cliff: "[N]et income in its most recent quarter was down 29 percent from a year earlier."
Chiefly, this is because the imported component parts John Deere needs to build its equipment have gotten more expensive. Far from helping manufacturers like the Illinois- and Iowa-based Deere company, then, Trump's tariffs are raising their costs of business and eating into their profits.
Rising costs of farm implements—like the tractors and threshers John Deere produces—raise costs for America's farmers in turn—and dent their profits. Or force them to forego improvements to their equipment at all. So—that is one side of the vise grip created by the tariffs.
The other side comes from the retaliation these trade wars invite. "China placed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans in March. Soy exports to China are down 51 percent this year, and the country hasn’t made any advance purchases of soybeans for the upcoming harvest"—reports the Times.
This retaliation means far less demand globally for U.S. crop exports. And this has caused a glut of overproduction. "Corn and soybean crop yields are expected to reach near-record highs this fall," the Times notes. With demand falling simultaneously—this will mean a ruinous collapse in prices.
So Trump's tariffs simultaneously make farming more expensive—and slash the revenue farmers can get on the market from selling their products. The perfect double-pincered attack on their industry.
This dynamic is not entirely new in our country's experience. As V.L. Parrington explains in his history of American liberalism—Main Currents in American Thought—this is why American farmers have generally opposed tariffs throughout American history.
Earlier in the nineteenth century—sectional agrarian interests dubbed the Whigs' policy of so-called "protective tariffs" the "Tariff of Abominations"—because it raised costs for them and lowered profits.
Later on in the same century, the western farmers—the last bastion of Jeffersonian Democracy in the country, at least in Parrington's telling—backed the Democratic party during the Populist era for the same reason.
We tend now to think of tariffs as a "Democratic" policy—since they involve government interference in the free working of the market. But people in the nineteenth century were not so confused—they knew (as Parrington exhaustively shows) that tariffs were the policy of the arch-conservative Big Business Whigs (and their heirs in the McKinleyite version of the Republican Party).
Why? Because tariffs were a way of playing favorites—of picking winners and losers in the economy, and thereby entrenching the interests of the already rich and propertied—at the expense of those without influence or pull in Washington.
Of course, the Populist agrarian revolt in the late nineteenth century was about more than just tariffs. More directly, it was about monetary policy. The Bryan-voting agrarian Democrats of the era wanted a looser money supply—that's what the cry for "free silver" was really about. That's why Bryan "sketched a silver Zion" in his 1896 campaign—in the poet Vachel Lindsay's phrase.
Farmers stood to benefit from a less restrictive monetary policy for two big reasons—as Parrington explains. First—they were constantly in debt to the banks; and so—a mildly inflationary policy would help lower the real value of what they owed.
(The creditor class—the bankers and "eastern monied interests"—therefore opposed minting silver for the same reason; they wanted to call in greenbacks, oppose bimetallism, and restrict the money supply because doing so increased the value of what was owed to them.)
Secondly, farmers wanted a mildly inflationary policy because it would increase prices for their crops. In the nineteenth century, as now, they were suffering from a glut of products. They had gotten too good at being the breadbasket of the world. They had produced above demand—and prices for crops were falling accordingly.
This invited the argument—Parrington notes—that the farmers were responsible for their own predicament. It was their fault for overproducing—the "eastern monied interests" maintained.
But in reality—Parrington points out—it had been a deliberate policy on the part of eastern financial conservatives to constrict the money supply by calling in greenbacks after the Civil War—and this had foreseeably slashed prices for farmers, driving them into ruin and preventing them from being able to pay off their debts (which, in turn, increased the real value of these debts for the creditor class—benefitting the banks and the propertied class at the expense of the farmers).
We're seeing a similar dynamic unfold today. America's farmers have, in a sense, "overproduced." They created a glut of their products without a market in which to send them—dramatically lowering prices for crops and cutting into their own profits.
But how were they supposed to do otherwise? How were they supposed to prepare for tariff policies that are announced by Tweet, and changed or withdrawn the next day—not to mention the even more unpredictable retaliatory actions from rival nations that these tariffs invite?
The farmers didn't overproduce—it was Trump that willfully slashed global demand for their products!
Of course, one could try to portray Trump as the inheritor of Bryan-style Populism—if not on the tariff issue, then at least on the monetary side. After all, it is Trump right now who is bullying the Federal Reserve and persecuting the members of its board in order to coerce them into lowering interest rates.
Trump's motive in persecuting the Fed board is quite obviously to advance his own personal power (he has never seen an institution whose independence he could tolerate), rather than out of any ideological commitment to a looser monetary policy (after all, Trump did not hesitate to rake Biden over the coals for the post-pandemic inflation that occurred early in his administration).
But since—for the moment—he is trying to bully the Fed specifically in order to get lower interest rates—one could argue that Trump is on the side right now of an inflationary policy that might (whatever other havoc it would wreak) at least raise prices for farm produce and thereby relieve distressed farmers.
But this would be missing the reason why the Fed has been resistant to lowering interest rates in the first place—namely, because Trump's tariffs are already inflationary, and so, cutting interest rates now could risk causing runaway inflation—which, however much it might boost prices for farm goods, would hardly be in the best long-term interest of anyone, farmers or others.
So once again—the root of the problem for farmers is the tariffs. The tariffs are raising their costs. The tariffs are slashing their revenues by lowering demand for their goods. And the tariffs are ensuring that interest rates remain high—because they make the Fed far less willing to cut them without risking broader harm to the economy. And these high interest rates in turn will continue to suppress prices for farm goods.
Thus, America's farmers really are being squeezed from all sides in a death-grip by Trump's policies. It's time they noticed it and got mad. It's time they turned their anxiety for the future into anger against the propertied New York billionaire—an "eastern monied interest" if ever there was one—who is almost single-handedly responsible for their plight (after all, the tariffs have all been done on Trump's sole say-so).
It's time, as one nineteenth century Populist leader put it, for America's farmers "to raise less corn and more hell." (Mary Elizabeth Lease, Quoted in Parrington.)
If farmers want lower equipment costs, better prices for their goods, and a less restrictive monetary policy—then they are going to have to do exactly what the Bryan-style Populists did in the nineteenth century, as Vachel Lindsay put it: namely, to "scourge the elephant plutocats/ with barbed wire from the Platte"—that is, to form a Populist voting alliance with with the western agrarian interests to oppose the exclusive interests of money and property.
Farmers of America—let's have a Populist alliance for the twenty-first century. Join us; we need your help!
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