Ex-USDA official warns farmers the GOP 'will do nothing' about Trump's 'colossal blunder'
A Kansas farmer recently told reporters: "Nothing … is going to make money” this year in President Donald Trump’s economy. Former USDA official and ex-U.S Trade Representative Greg Frazier warned him to get used to that.
“If he wants to come out ahead this year, this eastern Kansas farmer should bet Republicans in the congressional delegation won’t help,” Frazier told the Kansas City Star. “If past performance indicates future results, it’s a sure thing.”
“As markets shriveled this year, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) claimed Trump gave ‘Kansas farmers and ranchers access to critically important export markets,’” according to Frazier. This fits what Marshall said during Trump’s first trade war with China years ago when he tried to claim Trump’s “policies are working.”
But they were a catastrophe, said Frazier. Kansas farmers lost $1 billion in exports. Farm bankruptcies doubled and they triggered bailouts that cost billions.
“Today’s farm trade collapse results from one of the most predictable policy failures in recent memory, a step-by-step replay of arbitrary … tariffs suffocating farm exports,” said Frazier, adding that “it’s inexplicable that those lessons are not being heeded by the president and the U.S. trade representative and the U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary — both of whom personally witnessed the destruction in Trump’s first term.
“The victims of this colossal blunder are relearning a painful lesson. Their lawmakers will do nothing,” Frazier said. “They support the tariffs. In March, Kansas Reps. Ron Estes, Tracey Mann and Derek Schmidt voted in favor of them, twice. It was a legislative sleight of hand, one sentence tucked into a procedural motion that stops the House from even considering legislation to repeal the tariffs. They did it again Sept. 16.”
In April, and again this week, Frazier said Sens. Marshall and Jerry Moran “could have repealed the tariffs,” but, they voted to keep them.
“Signals of an emerging crisis appeared almost immediately after the president’s April 2 tariff announcement. It was projected in the export outlook planned for release May 29. But USDA leaders spiked the report, then excised the expert-generated analysis,” said Frazier, who served as Chief of Staff for the USDA under Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, Sens. Marshall and Mann tout trade announcements like Trump’s so-called move into the Australian beef market — which was already open to the U.S., and with U.S. beef processors lucky to move “$1-2 million worth of beef annually into Australia, compared to the $4 billion worth of beef Australia sent to the U.S. last year.”
And while Trump’s USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins “was boosting these phantom deals,” behind the scenes Frazier said Agriculture Department officials were “putting pencil to paper developing the completely predictable bailout from tariff carnage.”
The USDA paid U.S. farmers $28 billion during Trump’s first term trade war with China. Congress appropriated $10 billion in December for more emergency payments and Trump’s budget bill included $60 billion in new farm subsidies.
But the cost to repeal the tariffs: Zero dollars, said Frazier.
Read Frazier's Kansas City Star column at this link.
