Farmers Sticking By Trump Even As Trade Wars Bite

[progressoid]

Most farmers haven't had a good year since President Trump took office and his policies on trade, immigration and ethanol are part of the problem. Yet farmers, who broadly supported Trump in 2016 are largely sticking with him as the impeachment inquiry moves forward. And if they did abandon him, it may not matter.

Farmer Luke Ulrich says he works at least 12 hours a day, almost every day, tending his crops and cattle near Baldwin City, Kan. Ulrich anticipates a fairly decent corn and soybean crop this year. But his expenses are so high, and the prices he's getting for his crops and cattle are so low, he's budgeting less than $25,000 in income for the whole year. "We more or less live off my wife's income," says Ulrich, looking up from the combine he's fixing. "She carries the benefits. If it wasn't for her we'd probably be sunk."

"I'd probably be lying if I said some of us aren't scratching our heads every once in a while," Ulrich says. "I sometimes wonder if [Trump] didn't bite off a little more than he could chew."

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John Herath, the news director at Farm Journal, polls more than a thousand farmers monthly. He says Trump's popularity slumped a bit in the summer, but bounced back, to 76% favorable, the week the House launched its impeachment inquiry. "You see everyone circling their wagons now and the farm community is no different in that," Herath says.

And politics are deeply personal these days, according to Chris Larimer, a political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa. Larimer says farmers are having to square their economic differences with Trump, with their partisan allegiance to him.

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For now, political ideology seems to be winning. While there's a lot of grumbling about Trump among farmers, neither the trade wars nor the impeachment investigations seem to be driving them away from him, yet.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/10/768635489/farmers-sticking-by-trump-even-as-trade-wars-bite