ACT I
President Donald Trump posts on Truth Social in March:
To the great farmers of the United States: get ready to start producing a lot of agricultural products to sell WITHIN the United States. Tariffs on external products will take effect on April 2. Have fun!
ACT II
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins speaks in April:
There is no one who will fight harder, smarter or strategically better than @POTUS – for ALL Americans…we are going to put America FIRST; not China, not India, not beef from Argentina, not dairy products from Canada – but America first.
ACT III
Trump speaks in October:
Trump: “The only high price we have is beef, and we will bring it down. And one of the things we're thinking about is beef from Argentina.
Oddly enough, American farmers don't like this play. The people who most strongly supported Trump in all three of his elections are now crying about it.
“NCBA family farmers and ranchers have numerous concerns about importing more Argentine beef to lower prices for consumers. This plan only creates chaos at a critical time of year for American cattle producers, while doing nothing to reduce prices in grocery stores.” said Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, strongly Trump supporter organization.
In fact, this self-serving industry hack is wrong. Import of Argentine beef. will lower prices. It's a basic principle of economics 101: more supply means lower prices.
And this is precisely the problem with American farmers – they are not vital. If food can be produced cheaper elsewhere, we will buy it elsewhere.
For decades, blue America and blue cities in red states subsidized inefficiency of rural America– funding hospitals, schools, postal services, broadband and other infrastructure in places where there are more cows than people. And for this generosity we were repaid with resentment, fanaticism, schism and the election of a person who embodies all this.
So screw it with all their precious subsidies. There is a certain poetic justice to the way Trump's most loyal supporters become his latest victims. Just months after his agriculture secretary promised to protect them from Argentine beef in the name of “America First,” Trump threw them under a tractor.
This is the story about Trumpism, is actually a betrayal disguised as populism – as he works to help his friends (in this is the case(Argentine right-wing President Javier Miley) at the expense of his country.
Now the people who cheered him loudest will finally know what we all already knew.
