As the White House moves forward with plans for a broader trade war, there are reports that the European Commission is considering tough new restrictions on agricultural imports. As Reuters reported, Donald Trump was asked about the possibility, though he didn’t seem to care.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday shrugged off the European Union’s reported push to block imports of U.S. soybeans and other foods made to different standards, warning such a move would only hurt Europe itself. Trump, speaking to reporters after a quick trip to Daytona Beach for the Daytona 500 car race, said the U.S. was sticking to its plans to start implementing reciprocal tariffs.
“That’s all right. I don’t mind,” the Republican said. “Let them do it. Let them do it.”
Trump on the EU possibly banning food imports from the US: "I don't mind. Let them do it. Let them do it."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-16T21:09:30.996Z
What the president did not acknowledge, of course, was that if EU limits agricultural imports from the United States, that would necessarily mean fewer consumers for American farmers.
In isolation, that might not seem especially notable, but in the larger context, Trump and his White House team have made a variety of related moves that also undermine the interests of American farmers. The Washington Post reported last week, for example, on the millions of dollars in federal funding that the farmers were expecting but have not received.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ordered the USDA to freeze funds for several programs designated by President Joe Biden’s signature clean-energy and health-care law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The freeze paused some funding for the department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides financial assistance for farmers to improve their infrastructure.
The Post’s report added that farmers “paid up front to build fencing, plant new crops and install renewable energy systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs.” But when the Trump administration froze the funding, it left the farmers on the hook.
The Post also published a separate report on the effects of the White House firing federal employees, some of whom worked specifically to benefit farmers. What’s more, the White House is trying to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and those efforts don’t just hurt vulnerable populations abroad. As a NOTUS report explained last week, “Over 40% of the food distributed through USAID programs is purchased from farmers in the U.S., amounting to about $2 billion per year.” Unfortunately, we can keep going: The White House’s anti-immigrant agenda is very likely to undermine the agricultural industry, which has long relied on migrant field workers, and the Trump administration’s haphazard approach to the burgeoning bird-flu threat is similarly poised to hurt, among others, farmers. It’s not exactly an electoral secret that the president and his party have fared well in rural areas in recent election cycles, and farmers have earned a reputation as a reliable GOP voting bloc. If Trump is aware of this, he appears uninterested in rewarding that political support. On the contrary, he and his team keep taking steps that will end up hurting farmers.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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