How farmers feel about Trump's trade wars

I've seen two pieces on this topic recently, one today from Bloomberg news by Mario Parker and Mike Dorning, and the other a few weeks ago by Jennifer Rubin, columnist for the Washington Post.  The pros and cons of Trump's trade wars are a complicated story, and I'm only going to focus on one issue:  evidence that farmers--a constituency associated with support for Tump in 2016--may be shifting that support (or, more precisely, presumed support) away from him.  The two headlines speak volumes.  For Parker and Dorning writing for Bloomberg, it's "Farmers Say Trump's $28 billion bailout isn't a solution."  Rubin's headline is "Trump has angered the wrong people:  farmers." 

Here's a salient excerpt from the Bloomberg story:

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue was fielding questions at a farm show in Decatur, Ill., in late August when his boss rang his cellphone. Perdue put the call on speaker and placed it next to the microphone so the crowd could hear Donald Trump speak. During the almost seven-minute call the president defended his handling of the trade conflict with China, which has cut off American farmers from one of their most important export markets. Yet he was quick to remind them that he’s tried to salve their pain. “I sometimes see where these horrible dishonest reporters will say that ‘oh jeez, the farmers are upset.’ Well, they can’t be too upset, because I gave them $12 billion and I gave them $16 billion this year,” said Trump, who then added, “I hope you like me even better than you did in ’16.”

A couple of years ago, a pep talk from Trump might have drawn raucous applause from one of the president’s key constituencies. This time the crowd was subdued. “The aid package that has come in is a relief, and it softens the landing, but it’s not a solution, it’s a Band-Aid,” says Stan Born, a farmer who attended the event. When asked if the payments make him whole, Born, who grows 500 acres of soybeans near Decatur, responds, “Of course not.” He’d rather have free trade, he says.

That's broadly consistent with what Rubin wrote in the Washington Post a few weeks ago, which included this excerpt suggesting--like today's Bloomberg story--that farmers are fed up with Trump's trade policies:

We have gotten so used to the formulaic story — interview member of President Trump’s base, find he still loves Trump, conclude Trump is invincible — that we wind up surprised when the logical and predictable laws of political gravity hit. This is certainly true of farmers. 

You know the setup — a sturdy farmer suffering from Trump-imposed tariffs grits his teeth and says he’s hurting but, by josh, he’s not parting with Trump whom he trusts to do the right thing. We are to conclude that Trump possesses magical political power, that farmers are too dumb to know what’s good for them or both. 

Well, it turns out Trump has no magic, and farmers know exactly what the president is doing to them. MSNBC on Monday interviewed Bob Kuylen, vice president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, who explained that his wheat farm, which depends on overseas markets, has lost $400,000 because of the administration’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and subsequent trade wars. During another interview, Christopher Gibbs, a soybean and corn farmer in Ohio, ridiculed Trump’s farm bailouts — which he called “hush money” intended to “sedate" farmers — and made clear that taxpayers are paying for this, not China. He, too, is losing money.

I admit to hoping that Rubin, along with Parker and Dorning, are spot on in their speculation that farmers who previously supported Trump are abandoning him.  But I want to highlight one other issue:  what happened when I Tweeted an msnbc story with a message similar to Rubin's a few weeks ago--that message being that farmers were hurting and some saw Trump's "bailout"--now valued at $28 million--as hush money.  Indeed, it is a story Rubin had referred to in her column.  The only responses I got to the Tweet boiled down to this:  It's farmers' own damn fault because they voted for Trump.

I'm pasting in two screen shots: 

Twitter Screenshots taken September 8, 2019 in response to
@lisareneepruitt's Tweet of Jennifer Rubin story 

My point:  how can Twitter responses like these possibly be helpful?  And, how is the left going to respond to people like farmers once Trump is defeated (IF he is defeated)?  Will the left be less inclined to help farmers--and other groups presumed to have monolithically supported Trump?  Sadly, that's what my Twitter feed often makes me expect.