Getting What You Asked For
By 
American farmers vote overwhelmingly for Republicans, no matter what Republicans do for them. So I am sure that Trump routinely messing with their lives, first through his tariff nonsense and now through slashing all the government welfare that keeps them afloat, with really make them rethink who they support next election, right? Ha ha ha ha, oh god no. They will vote for the leopard with their one remaining hand after the leopard has eaten the other one and is presently consuming their face. But that doesn’t get in the way of the fact that Trump really is hurting farmers big time.
USAID oversees projects such as food aid, disaster relief and health programs in over 100 countries with a staff of more than10,000 and a budget of around $40 billion. Billions of those dollars flowed back into the American economy until President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on foreign-aid spending last month.
Now U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo. That includes American farms, which supply about 41 percent of the food aid that the agency, working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sends around the world each year, according to a 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service. In 2020, the U.S. government bought $2.1 billion in food aid from American farmers.
Purchases and shipments of U.S. food aid worth over $340 million — including rice, wheat and soybeans — have been paused during Trump’s foreign-aid freeze, according to officials and an email obtained by The Post. That has left hundreds of tons of American-grown wheat stranded in Houston alone, Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said Tuesday.
Besides farmers, researchers whose work is funded by USAID have been furloughed. Smaller companies in sectors such as global health care could go out of business, upending the jobs of office staff and security guards. Experts and representatives from the industries affected said the disruption will worsen if the pause in spending persists and USAID continues to lose staff that once administered these programs.
“You’re talking about a direct impact on American products and American jobs,” said George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution.
The fact of the matter is that the government has been subsidizing farmers forever and yet they have a huge fetish around the idea of “individual responsibility.” And when people point out that they are receiving government welfare, they get super defensive and pissy about it. I’ve seen it in farm magazines of the 80s and 90s when these accusations began to hit home. See they are producers and so it is not welfare for reasons. Compelling!
In any case, Trump could confiscate their farms, burn them, and leave them with nothing at all and they will still vote for JD Vance in 2028 because he’s one of them.