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How Trump's trade wars hurt US farmers
CNN
Published on Oct 23, 2018
As a result of President Donald Trump's trade wars with China and other countries, US farmers are seeing a surplus of perishable goods stuck in limbo and increased prices for equipment.
In good years, cargo trains moving west along the flat, sweeping grasslands of North Dakota’s plains are a sign of money rolling in.
Today, as tariffs from America’s largest foreign soybean market -- China -- threaten to upend the industry, many trains sit idle.
“There are no shuttle trains leaving. There is no nothing,” said Joe Ericson, the 38-year-old president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. “They can’t get rid of the beans.”
In conversations with more than 50 farmers, producers and agriculture experts in five states representing each of the five food groups, one trend was clear: The once-deep ties to President Donald Trump have frayed over the past year. But they remain intact for a small majority of farmers CNN spoke with ahead of the critical 2018 midterm elections. Democrats, who see an opening with Trump’s trade war, will likely struggle to make inroads with these voters.
The President gives all of them plenty to complain about. They grumble about his tweeting -- that’s not their style -- and what his trade war has done to their bottom lines. But if the President’s re-election were held tomorrow, most of them would back him. They trust Trump, and many believe Democrats don’t understand or largely ignore their way of life.
Still, Trump’s deep support in rural America, which helped propel him to the White House in 2016, is being tested. The wheat farmers, soybean growers and pork producers confront a growing trade war that is forcing them to re-evaluate their ties to the President’s Republican Party and openly question whether his mantra to “Make America Great Again” came at the expense of voters like them.
Read more on CNN.com: https://cnn.it/2CxBkty
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News & Politics
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