Comment by more_corn
11 hours ago
The thing about tariffs is you’re guaranteed to be on both sides because the other side retaliates.
Farmers get screwed twice because our tariffs increase the costs of their inputs and the retaliation reduces the value of outputs.
If I was a farmer I’d be tearing my hair out about now.
Not just both sides, but infinite sides, every country border for anything that crosses the border. Making a pencil might requires dozens to thousands of mining/factories in the pencil supply chain and there is taxation at every level!
Milton Friedman - I, Pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws and https://thenewinquiry.com/milton-friedmans-pencil/
"Look at this lead pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who could make this pencil. Remarkable statement? Not at all. The wood from which it is made, for all I know, comes from a tree that was cut down in the state of Washington. To cut down that tree, it took a saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To make steel, it took iron ore. This black center—we call it lead but it’s really graphite, compressed graphite—I’m not sure where it comes from, but I think it comes from some mines in South America. This red top up here, this eraser, a bit of rubber, probably comes from Malaya, where the rubber tree isn’t even native! It was imported from South America by some businessmen with the help of the British government. This brass ferrule? [Self-effacing laughter.] I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. Or the yellow paint! Or the paint that made the black lines. Or the glue that holds it together. Literally thousands of people co-operated to make this pencil. People who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met! When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. What brought them together and induced them to cooperate to make this pencil? There was no commissar sending … out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system: the impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate, to make this pencil, so you could have it for a trifling sum.
That is why the operation of the free market is so essential. Not only to promote productive efficiency, but even more to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world."
Farmers stand to benefit from the current administration's trade and immigration policy; bailouts are part of the program. Bailouts were given out during the trade wars in 2017-2020. Bailouts are expected to pay out in early 2026 as part of the annual farm aid bill due in November.
You do have to make it till then, a lot of smaller farmers may not and it will increase consolidation of farming even more
Not only bailouts, but GOP aligned farmers voted for Trump to remove 2024 H-2A visa reforms that addressed abuse of the system (seizing passports, etc).
They didn't want to pay for the H-2A paperwork, but didn't like that undocumented laborers would move from farm to farm depending on conditions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdWrHb8b-c0
Farmers voted for tariffs so they should be happy. What, they didn't think tariffs were going to be bad when just slammed on the table? Maybe they should also think about higher education, to learn how things work beyond high school education.
They've had the education system they depend on attacked and weakened for generations, they've had fear and distrust of science, experts, and scholars drilled into them, and they've been told countless lies including very comforting lies about what tariffs would mean for them by the very people they were told were the only ones who could be trusted.
I can see the appeal of blaming farmers for getting exactly what they voted for, but honestly they were suckers who were victimized. My hope is that many of them will feel betrayed enough to break free from their indoctrination and start looking for truths and answers outside of the circles which have played them for fools, but that's not going to be an easy process since it'll mean challenging their closest held prejudices and the tearing down and rebuilding of core parts of their identity. That sort of thing is hard enough to do when your world isn't falling apart around you and the last thing the ones who are willing to try need is everyone telling them they deserved what was done to them and that they'll get no sympathy from anyone.
So I thought the same thing but this take persuaded me somewhat. https://youtu.be/badGHJLDpP8?si=5GgFcZky38V0wyCh
I feel as bad for the farmers who voted for this as I feel for the farmers who were hurt by the civil war and the ending of slavery. They knew what they were supporting, thought they would be unaffected and actually benefit from the result.
They are not some dumb poor podunks
That's a very empathetic take. But it's also essentially "society made them do it". When they also clearly voted to root out all their farm labor. They support their own education system.
They've spent enough joy owning the libs and scorning education. It's just FAFO.
In the last trade war (2017), the farmers got 18 billion dollars in bailouts. It's the same guy, so they're waiting again for their handouts.
I'd bet farmers would much rather have repeat customers or the promise of future valuable repeat customers over bailouts. But with these tariffs and retaliations, their former buyers are finding new sources. Even after the trade war ends, inertia will be another hurdle for our farmers.
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