With Guelph being home or Canadian headquarters to so many agri-food companies, organizations and research centres, there’s a keen interest here in the fall-out from the trade war started by US President Donald Trump.
The battle is not exclusive to the agri-food sector. But Trump’s $12-billion commitment to American farmers earlier this summer to help them through the depressed markets caused by the trade war highlighted where a big impact is expected.
Now, though, it’s turning out that Trump is losing support in the very fields of rural America that he claims he is trying to make great again, the ones whose support helped him on his way to his regrettable 2016 election victory.
A survey involving more than 900 midwest US farmers at the end of July and early August, conducted by leading American agricultural publication Farm Futures, shows support for Trump among its readers has dropped 15 per cent. Back in 2016 when the election took place, 75 per cent of the magazine’s readers supported him. Now, that’s fallen to 60 per cent.
Farm Futures notes that farmers generally are reliable Republicans. Only 10 per cent of those who responded to the survey say they’re Democrats or lean toward that party, while 75 per cent identify as Republicans (the others are independents).
So given those partisan numbers, you’d think Trump would find the survey results disconcerting and unsettling, and maybe even bothersome enough to re-consider his protectionist policies.
Worse for him is that this poll was taken as Trump was making his $12-billion promise, a promise designed to keep farmers in his pocket.
But still, his support has waned. Farmers don’t like some of the things he’s done, like cutback on support for renewable fuels (from corn). But the worst is meddling with trade. Only eight per cent of growers support the president’s statement that “trade wars are good and easy to win.” And just 14 per cent said tariffs, which he claimed would help bring prosperity to US farms by shutting down imports, will be good for their farm’s profits.
That’s more than almost every economist in the world. But it’s still a paltry number.
Worse yet is that 40 per cent believe Trump's actions on trade have done permanent damage to agriculture. That’s a demoralizing statistic, emerging from a community that really doesn’t need anything more to drag it down. Farmers would much prefer to let the market dictate prices, rather than government intervention.
Farm Futures says anxiety about financial pressure appears to be growing, particularly among young farmers carrying large debt. Half of the respondents said they worry about whether they would be able to pay back debt.
That’s huge, and as the magazine notes, it’s the highest reading since it started asking the question some six years ago. And it’s rising significantly, up six per cent from the magazine’s March survey.
But US farmers aren’t giving up on Trump. Even though they say they don’t support him, they are overwhelmingly willing to give him time to work out better trade deals.
And further, despite saying Trump is causing permanent damage to agriculture and saddling them with crippling debt, an incredible 84 per cent believe “their farm will be better off under President Trump in the long run, despite the short-term pain caused by tariffs.”
Better off than under the Democrats, they mean, whom US farmers roundly despise.
So with that anti-Clinton, anti-Obama sentiment remaining, maybe Trump won’t be losing much sleep over the survey results after all. But US farmers are just starting to feel the ill effects of his protectionism. Let’s see what this survey turns up in a few more months.
