“During the 2024 presidential election,”  Maurie Backman wrote at Moneywise in March, “farming-dependent counties overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump. Almost 78% endorsed his most recent presidential run …”

Even two months into Trump’s second presidency, farmers had cause to regret their decision.

His closure of USAID knocked out billions of dollars in farm product sales, as well as loans and grants.

Then came the “Liberation Day” tariffs — taxing American buyers of foreign goods, in response to which many other countries’ governments imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on their citizens’ purchase of American foods or simply cut off those purchases … especially China, and especially soybeans, which I’ll come back to.

By mid-May, farmers were plowing under crops in some areas because Trump’s immigration crackdown meant many of the migrant laborers farmers depend on to harvest those crops had either been abducted/deported, or else refused to work in locations where they most feared abduction/deportation.

Trump’s solution? He wants to use tariff revenue to cut billions of dollars in welfare checks to the farmers he’s putting out of business. So all of us non-farmers are paying outrageous taxes, folded into outrageous prices, so that the farmers can get paid for NOT selling us food at non-outrageous prices.

Trump should have a ghost-writer ghost-write a sequel to his old ghost-written book focusing on his trade policies. Proposed title: “The Art of the No Good, Very Bad, Crack-Addled Raw Deal.”

It gets worse. Now the Trump administration has decided to bail out Argentina’s Javier Milei to the tune of $20 billion in “liquidity support” for his country’s volatile currency.

Argentine farmers grow lots of soybeans. Argentine farmers also export lots of soybeans.

Chinese customers buy lots of soybeans. They used to buy lots of soybeans grown by US farmers. Now they buy soybeans grown by Argentine farmers instead.

Oh, did I mention that one reason Milei needs a bailout is that he recently lowered the export tax on (and therefore his government’s revenues from) Argentine soybeans?

So now you and I get to pay MORE taxes and HIGHER prices so that American farmers get a bailout, Javier Milei gets a bailout, and Argentine farmers can sell more soybeans to Chinese customers at LOWER prices and pay LOWER taxes.

Insult, meet injury.

As Barack Obama used to say, “elections have consequences.”

All of the above are consequences of electing a senile narcissist who previously took six businesses, including casinos — which are  pretty much licenses to print money — into bankruptcy.

One major problem with democracy as a political principle is that when a plurality of voters makes a stupid decision, everyone else ends up paying the price. And Trump is certainly earning his place as a poster boy for that particular problem.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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