From one of the really good guys on the net – More Perfect Union – comes an update on Tyson’s decision to close a beef processing plant in Lexington, Ne. The town is 11,000 and Tyson’s employs 3,200 of them. You can imagine what that does to the local small businesses, the schools, the property values.
Under the Trump regime, rural America has taken a huge punch in the gut. Whether it be policies on beef, tariffs or corporate ag Trump has screwed the farmer on every front.
Blog For Iowa 
Very sorry, Dave — on this one occasion I have to politely but emphatically disagree with your last sentence.
Whether in regard to WOTUS, pesticides, or many other environmental issues, Trump has done plenty of anti-environment favors for farmers. Yes, it depends partly on which farmers are being talked about. But at least in Iowa, there is a strong tendency for farmers to both vote Republican (most of them voted for Trump) and resist any and all efforts to regulate their environmental impacts. A prime example was in the CEDAR RAPIDS GAZETTE today in the form of an op-ed by a farmer who essentially warned that Iowa legislators had better do whatever farmers want in regard to pesticides, or else. He also essentially claimed that Iowa farmers are doing a marvelous job of caring for the environment, a big fat lie that is obvious to anyone who looks at what agriculture is doing to Iowa’s water.
I live in rural Iowa, and I have to drink that water. If Iowa Democratic candidates run this year on the message that Trump has been nothing but a ginormous awful bully to poor noble Iowa farmers, I will, at least privately, throw up.
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Trumps tariffs directly affected these factory closures. If you look at the supply chain:
Trumps Tariffs → lower producer margins → reduced beef production → tighter supply → higher costs to consumers → lower demand for more expensive beef –> plant closures. As an added bonus, producer costs are also increasing because the ‘illegals’ that work on farms for slave labour wages are being deported by Trumps ICE.
Beef exports to China from the US was cut in half after tariffs were implemented, so a decline of hundreds of millions per year in demand for beef. If you add all the countries exports of beef, its in the billions. These countries have outright stated that Trumps tariffs are why they stopped purchasing from the US. Hundreds of American soy farmers are also closing down and are blaming Trumps tariffs for their closure due to tariffs increasing costs and reducing demand for their product (who pays the tariffs again?? ), and now they’re asking for a bailout in the billions (funny how they hate welfare/socialism for others but it’s okay if they ask for it). Unfortunately America’s education system is completely broken (defunded by republicans) so a lot of people don’t have the critical thinking or knowledge to connect the dots. Sadly nothing will change because Americans vote based on loyalty of a party, instead of the policies that benefit them.
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