Seeds of chaos
Iowa farmers are about to plant into a seedbed of chaos.
Tariffs on Mexico and Canada are on one day and off the next. Markets are whiplashed. Consumer confidence is tanking. Corn and soy prices bounced back after plummeting, when Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum explained the facts of life to President Trump in a phone call.
Trump hung up with her and promptly postponed tariffs on neighbors north and south for 30 days. He also exempted potash, 85% of which comes from Canada and is vital to corn growers, from any tariffs now or imagined, because Sen. Check Grassley was so plaintive.
Sheinbaum reminded Trump that the US is bound with Mexico and Canada in a free-trade agreement that he negotiated in his first term.
Before his flip for Sheinbaum, Trump said there would be a little bit of hardship for farmers but they would grow to like losing their export markets.
“Have fun!” he told the yeomen.
Some fun.
No less than Zippy Duvall, leader of the American Farm Bureau, pleaded with Trump to back off his tariff talk.
Be patient, Trump replied.
Have fun and be patient.
Remember that there is no reprieve on a trade war with China. Iowa corn, soy and pork are redmarked for up to 25% levies by the Chinese in retaliation. Food security remains China’s national priority. After Trump’s first trade war, China solidified its relationship with Brazil and Argentina as preferred soy providers. The US is not viewed as reliable.
Trump is not indicating he will relent on tariffs with China. Quiet talks go on, but not at the highest level.
Iowans are bracing for it. They say that you have to take the short-term pain for long-term gain. Except we always seem to get the pain without the gain. We also are counting on some Trump Bump welfare to nurse our export wounds. Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins is working on just that sort of payday worth at least $30 billion to production agriculture. Patience. It could come up to two or three times that sum, like last time. The USDA’s Commodity Credit Corp appears to be a bottomless well.
We’re farming the program as usual, welfare queens wearing seed corn caps. Freedom to farm fencerow to fencerow until I can’t, then solve my disaster with a Trump Bump check.
Zippy Duvall and friends like to say that they want to earn their living from the market. They vote for Trump assuming that welfare will be available. Are we beyond embarrassment?
Trump fired the bird flu workers. Then he tried to rehire them. The same with the guys who know the nuclear codes. They fired them and then tried to rehire them but were having a hard go of it.
This is Trump Management by Bankruptcy and Firing as previously seen on reality TV.
Some people think there is a design to the chaos. Not. It is narcism run amok. Who cares if China doesn’t buy your soybeans? Elon Musk?
Mind you, the tariffs on Canada and Mexico could sprout within 30 days, depending on who Trump talks to on the phone that day. Go ahead, make a marketing plan around that. How are you going to manage those feeder pigs Canada sends our way?
Trump said he loves the farmers. He has a funny way of showing it. His love makes them grovel over potash. He has us on our knees begging for a welfare check. Such love, so perverse.
It might be good for us. If we could live without Asian export markets, we would not need to kill the Gulf of Mexico. If Iowa were not half full of Chinese hogs, we might not drink down the Dakota Aquifer below Storm Lake and Cherokee upon which we humans depend. Getting there means upending the system that keeps on giving Iowa the short shrift on a welfare check. What comes behind it is known only to the Good Lord, because Trump obviously has no clue what he is doing. Up today, down tomorrow, firing today and regretting it later, throwing freedom overboard because it is just too much ballast.
Chaos. It is what Iowa voted for. Good may come from it. We can hope that President Sheinbaum can keep President Trump from hanging up on the suicide hotline. She seems to be the only person who can talk him back from the ledge. We hope she is looking out for Iowa, too.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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One may bet this has my attention. I have thought for a long time the family farm was been miss used. My knowledge of farming goes back to how they farmed sixty years ago. That makes me a Conservative, right. When farmers raised the feed for the livestock they made their living with, the manure was a soil emolument, not a problem. Rotated four crops and raised three or four kinds of livestock was a hedge against market fluctuations. My Great Uncle, John Rose used to say”If the Ag.Teacher knew how to farm, he’d be farming”. Some truth to that. This “Volatility “ may be just what it takes to rethink how Iowa is farmed.
Sadly, we're not talking about random people getting hurt. These are our neighbors and family who are getting axed. They aren't sucking on the government teat, they're an investment in our current and future success. You can't Make America Great Again by not investing in our country.
What makes a country a shithole is greedy oligarchs who don't invest in the country or the people. Mexico is a beautiful country with good hardworking people, but the poverty is heartbreaking. And we're fast becoming Mexico.