FILE PHOTO: A John Deere sprayer sits in a popcorn field in Redkey, Indiana June 28, 2012. REUTERS/Brent Smith/File Photo
Farmers are angry, but it isn’t the trade war with China that has pushed them over the edge. It’s Trump’s catering to Big Oil on ethanol.
The trigger wasn’t Trump’s China tariffs, but waivers the administration granted this month to 31 oil refineries so they don’t have to blend ethanol into their gasoline. Since roughly 40% of the U.S. corn crop is turned into ethanol, it was a fresh blow to corn producers already struggling with five years of low commodity prices and the threat of mediocre harvests this fall after some of the worst weather in years.
“That flashpoint was reached and the frustration boiled over, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Lynn Chrisp, who grows corn and soybeans near Hastings, Nebraska, and is president of the National Corn Growers Association.
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“That’s our own country stabbing us in the back,” Miller said. “That’s the president going, the oil companies need to make more than the American farmer. … That was just, ‘I like the oil company better or I’m friends with the oil company more than I’m friends with the farmer.’”
The White House appears to be oblivious to the looming storm clouds over the Heartland, but Trump has a massive and growing problem with farmers. The nation’s farmers are being gutted by the trade war and hit by policy decisions that reduce the ethanol requirement.
Farmers have now been described in multiple stories as angry at Trump.
Angry voters don’t vote for the incumbent when they are given a reasonable alternative.
Democrats need to campaign on restoring the ethanol requirements and ending the trade war. Trump is going to do neither of these things, which means that farmers in states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are going to be open to the message vote Democrat and save your farm.
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