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Trump-loving farmers want blue states to bail them out again [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-20
President Donald Trump decimated the soybean and wider farming industry during his first go-around in the White House, requiring a massive $28 billion federal bailout, which was shouldered mostly by blue states, the nation’s main economic drivers. It is red America that sucks the rest of the country dry.
So having seen first-term tariffs drive China’s insatiable soybean demand to Brazil, and watching Trump in 2024 promise even more tariffs, what did these farmers do? They voted for him again last year.
We recently checked in on Arkansas’ soybean farmers, begging the feds to help them out.
“I think the tariffs are the ice cream on the cake of a perfect storm,” one said at a public meeting where they whined about the consequences of their votes. “When you try and sell a product, okay, U.S. soybeans leaving New Orleans without the tariff to China are cheaper than Brazilian soybeans, at the current market. But when you put the tariff on top of them, Brazilian beans are cheaper.”
We should note how these farmers are not following their president’s edict for them to “Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”
In reality, there’s nary a hint of “fun” in any of these stories, like this one in Nebraska where Republicans strongly denounced “socialism” … except when they called it “safety nets,” which they very much felt they deserved.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks to farmers in North Carolina in 2020.
Not a lot of fun in this well-done article by the Tennessee Lookout, either. Volunteer State soybean farmers are faring about as well as their colleagues in other states. “We’re in a significant and desperate situation,” said Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council Executive Director Stefan Maupin. “None of the crops that farmers grow right now return a profit. They don’t even break even.”
Wow, that sounds terrible. Why can’t they break even? There’s inflation, of course, courtesy of Trump’s tariffs. And these farmers have been hit with a double whammy since China has shifted much of its soybean purchases to Brazil in response.
And these farmers should’ve known better. Tennessee soybean farmers lost $40 million during Trump’s 2018 tariff chaos, even after federal bailout money, according to a University of Tennessee Agriculture Extension study. But when a trans kid might dare to participate in school sports on the other side of the country—why, they had no choice!
“Right now this year and looking like going into next year, the crop will not cash flow,” Maupin said, noting that even if Trump managed to secure a trade deal with China, farmers will still have to borrow against their assets to survive, driving themselves into debt if they want to keep farming.
Yes, this is all a pitch for more government aid. Farmers are hoping for more of that sweet, sweet federal socialism (just don’t call it that). Why should they care anyway? Blue states will be the ones bailing them out yet again.
But they’re also eyeing new markets, pinning hopes on states, like California and Washington, that are setting new fuel standards. Unfortunately for them, those states are moving in the opposite direction.
California’s Air Resources Board has been drafting new standards, and one of its goals is “[d]ecreasing role for biomethane as a transport fuel.” While the agency acknowledges a role for biofuels in hard-to-decarbonize sectors (like heavy industrial trucks), it explicitly prefers “waste-based feedstocks”—or used oils—over virgin crops. And even then, CARB has proposed a hard 20% aggregate cap on biofuels, which has agricultural trade groups howling.
No, the blue states shouldn’t bail these farmers out—whether through federal bailouts or biofuel mandates. After decades of subsidies repaid with contempt and the blight of Trumpism, they can fuck off.
This is, after all, exactly what they overwhelmingly voted for.
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