How Trump's Trade War Is Crushing Farm Communities

Rural Americans love Donald Trump.  They voted him into office because rural farm communities have been dying a slow death.  This article describes how Trump's tariff policies are accelerating the death of rural farm communities in the Mid-West.  The Trump administration has provided a $12 billion subsidy to farmers who have been suffering from the loss of export markets.  That may help Republicans in the mid-term election but it won't help farm communities over the longer term.  Other nations have already taken over the export markets that the farmers have depended upon.  Small farmers will be unable to survive and pass on their farms to family members.  Large corporate farms will buy their farms at auction and the communities that supported the small farmers will erode rapidly.  The corporate farms will not use the small community banks that are a pillar of the community and other services that supported the community will evaporate because the market for their services will be too small. 

Unfortunately for the small farmers and many farm communities in the Mid-West Trump does not understand how his tariffs are doing the opposite of what he had promised.  He understands how to run a political campaign that is based upon promises that cannot be realized but he has unleashed a devil for the voters that put him in the White House.  They cannot survive on promises or on federal subsidies.