Here’s an interesting new wrinkle in the American First populism of the Republican Party. Some MAGA oxes are potentially being gored and they don’t like it:
Donald Trump’s latest salvo in his trade war with China is raising hackles among fellow Republicans from farm states, a crucial voting bloc in the 2024 GOP primary.
The former and would-be future president pitched a new proposal Monday to overhaul the U.S. trading relationship with Beijing, part of a wave of anti-China rhetoric surging through Washington in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon flap earlier this month. But while there is consensus within the GOP on taking a tough line, many rural Republicans were quick to reject Trump’s calls to slap new tariffs on Chinese goods — since Beijing targeted the U.S. farm economy during the former president’s last trade war with China. The rare pushback, in public and private, presents an early break with some representatives for one of his key constituencies: rural Americans.
Trump argues his recent proposal, which also includes revoking China’s preferred trading status, would reduce “taxes” on “American producers” in order to “completely eliminate” U.S. dependence on China. But key farm state lawmakers say it’s more complicated than that and they worry Trump’s plans, should he be reelected, would inflict new harm on the U.S. agricultural economy, which currently relies on exports to its biggest market: China.
“There are serious trade disparities that should rightfully be raised, but we should be honest about the potential economic impact to rural America,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.).
Another farm state Republican lawmaker was more blunt when asked about how Trump’s new trade proposal could impact the U.S. agriculture economy, calling it “fucking suicide” for rural communities.
Trump’s last tariff war with China originally targeted China’s steel dumping but provoked crippling retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural exports to China — hitting farmers who were already struggling financially. Rural families, especially on small farms, felt the economic toll. Farms increasingly defaulted on their loans as China looked to Brazil and other foreign markets for farm exports, even after Trump spent $28 billion in federal funds on bailout payments. Trump eventually signed a trade deal with Beijing that he claimed would result in China purchasing $50 billion in U.S. farm goods, something China has failed to live up to. Tariffs on billions of dollars on Chinese goods put in place by Trump remain today. The Biden administration, which is reviewing the tariffs, has made no moves to ease them in the past two years.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a staunch Trump ally, cautioned against new trade moves that could hurt American agriculture. “I can understand what he’s doing — China is our biggest adversary,” Tuberville said. “But we’ve got to be careful about tariffs on farmers.”
Trade wars have a habit of getting messy, don’t they? The Biden administration is probably keeping those tariffs in place for political reasons as much as anything else. Lifting tariffs on China in this environment would be very controversial — and the ones screaming the loudest would be the very people who are afraid of Trump’s promises to do more of it. No good deed goes unpunished.
Trump was always clueless about trade and he hasn’t learned anything. He thought that he could strong-arm China just by throwing some tariffs on their goods and nobody would be hurt but them. It doesn’t work that way, not that he knows that, even now. Biden has taken a different tack with bills like the CHIPs Act which encourages manufacturing in America.
It will be interesting to see how DeSantis and the other wannabes handle this. It’s a dicey issue in the MAGA base.