The Bailout Bandaid - Tariffs Work But What Is The Solution For American Farmers?

Brandon Turbeville
Natural Blaze
July 25, 2018

Despite the tense nature of American politics in 2018, there are a number of issues both Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Namely, support for Israel, police state measures, and foreign wars. But, recently, another issue of mutual agreement has popped up in the news - the issue of tariffs. After decades of watching Free Trade gut the American economy until it has become nothing more than a shell of its former self, virtually all Republicans and Democrats can agree that what America needs is more Free Trade.

That’s right. After decades of jobs being shipped overseas, lower wages, longer hours and general living standards plummeting in America, Republicans and Democrats claim that tariffs or (*shudders at the word*) “protectionism” could lead to disaster, i.e. job loss, lower wages, longer hours and general living standards plummeting in America. Never mind that tariffs and (here’s that scary word again) “protectionism” led to the creation of the greatest economic system in recorded history. Never mind that Free Trade has all but destroyed the greatness of that system. Just keep “thinking globally” even if your own home is falling apart at the seams.

Thus, hysteria over Trump’s tariffs has erupted from all quarters of the US government, particularly Congress, a collection of people who are well known to be the property of major corporations who, coincidentally, benefit from the lack of tariffs, cheap foreign labor, and low living standards among the working class.

After having rushed full steam ahead into the “global system” and internationalism, any hint of putting one’s own national economy first is met with hyperventilation and hysteria. Naturally, other countries like China who have been benefiting from internationalist policies (i.e. Free Trade) have responded in kind in order to keep the gravy train coming, imposing tariffs of their own and even taking their cases to the World Trade Organization.

In a cunning move to pressure US President Trump over the issue of tariffs, China responded by imposing tariffs of its own. The difference, however, is that China targeted industries specific to Trump’s base in the working class and agricultural sectors hoping that the pain of tariffs would hit  Trump supporters specifically and thus force Trump to back off his policies.

Parity Is The Answer To America’s Agricultural Crisis

Brandon Turbeville

Natural Blaze

March 6, 2017

Farming is, by nature, an up and down game, with so many variables going into the production of food that can drive both prices and production. Throughout American and, indeed, world history, agriculture has been susceptible to the climate, weather, human action, war, and economic policy. But, for all history, one thing has remained constant: the fact that human society totally depends on the ability of farmers to produce food. It is quite a simple realization but a powerful one. The death of the farmer is the death of humanity as a whole.

In the United States, since the early 1900s, the entire country has experience various farm crises – some as a result of weather and climate disasters but mostly as a result of governmental policy, i.e. the inability of the U.S. government to ensure that farmers actually have an incentive to produce food.

America made it through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression and still lived to establish perhaps the greatest or near greatest fair agricultural system in the world . . . until the mid-1950s when that system was ended with the advent of the 1980s farm crisis and a series of events that has seen big banks and big corporations take the place of family farmers, a process that is continuing to this day. In 2017, American farming is in the worst shape of American history.