Back in May, the Dakota Institute postulated that Trump’s tariffs could cost South Dakota about $296 million a year, “significantly increasing expenses for businesses” that rely on imported goods. That impact is hard to predict, given the improvisational and irrational nature of Il Duce’s policymaking. But whatever the tariff rate of the day may be, Trump’s biggest tariff targets also happen to be South Dakota’s biggest import partners:
Trump is making it more expensive for South Dakota businesses to buy the animal processing, machinery, chemicals, and hardware they need from the countries they trust. How does that make South Dakota great?
I don’t know if farmers think the US market for their grain is big enough to maintain their field sizes or what (pretty sure it is not), but unless China signs some agreements, things are going to get very very rough. It’s also not a good thing to be at odds with your neighbors to the North or South.
Maybe farmers are hoping for a Trump bailout again, I dunno, but why they voted for this Elitist East Coast New Yorker, twice, is beyond me.
sx123: “Maybe farmers are hoping for a Trump bailout again . . .” That seems to be the pattern for Trump: bumble into foolhardy, ill-conceived policies then buy your base out of the trouble it caused. Somehow Trump is only remembered for the rescue not for creating the chaos that people needed to be rescued from.
Voted for thrice, to be more accurate ;-)
Glad to see a comment section, again. Is tihis the mountain lion hunting pol from days of yore? I am getting older with more health problems. Keep up the good wolrk, Master.
Alienating our trade partners will have long-term negative impacts on South Dakota’s agricultural economy. China, Canada, Brazil and the rest of the world could form their own global trade pact with everyone else in the world who’d like to get back to predictable, rule-based open markets and exclude the United States, leaving us with a surplus of inedible subsidized corn and soybeans, giant farm machinery, and farm debt that no farmers can pay off because we’ve broken our own industrial-agriculture system. We could focus on local agriculture, producing fruits and vegetables and grains that we sell locally, but we’re also kicking out the immigrant workforce that we need to pick those tomatoes and berries and nuts and what-not.
We could just take Ag Sec. Rollins’s advice and raise our own chickens and veggies in our backyards, but then we’d see an enormous decline in measurable productivity, as people would spend more time in household sustenance labor and less time at paying jobs and other GDP-boosting activites, leading to further economic decline and upheaval.
In CO my $8.99 container of ground Folgers coffee from Brazil is now $18.89.
The growers didn’t eat the tariff.
Brazil didn’t eat the tariff.
The importer didn’t eat the tariff.
Kroger didn’t eat the tariff …..
Oh, well. Long live the “tariffs aren’t taxes” Tariff Pig.