Trump's Trade War Combined with Budget Cuts and Fired Federal Workers is a Big Problem for Rural America

Job cuts. Budget cuts. Tax cuts. More pollution. More inflation. More household debt. More federal debt. More economic disparity. Trump's bungling, bullying "leadership" is the real emergency.

President Donald Trump expanded his trade war this week, imposing a minimum 10% tariff on all U.S. imports. Additionally, he introduced “reciprocal” tariffs targeting countries that export more to the U.S. than they import, with the reciprocal tariff set at half the value of that trade deficit.

While I don’t see this as a well-thought-out or carefully considered economic strategy, it's the reality of the economic policy and executive power we face today. It’s unfortunate, but a very narrow majority of Americans voted for this direction. Now we're stuck with it until some combination of economic chaos, over-reach by the rich, and/or mismanagement of natural or public health disasters generates enough outrage to vote out the incumbents.

We also have to navigate a continuous barrage of misinformation, disinformation, and dishonest debate in this political moment. Threatening military action and calling it peace. Claiming a balanced budget while printing $5 trillion to pay for tax cuts that benefit multi-millionaires and corporations. Pretending U.S. farmers “feed the world” while being a net food importer. That sort of thing.

Trump, who thinks using the word “groceries” somehow makes him a man of the people, has little understanding of how most Americans live. He's an Ivy League-educated rich kid. He’s a convicted criminal who’s never faced consequences for his crimes. He’s a bully who has never faced accountability for the damage he’s left in his wake. And he surrounds himself with disposable “advisors” and yes-men to do his dirty work and talk his talking points.

Trump’s leadership is straightforward and simple: if you're not a MAGA voter, you’re on the enemies list. If you're not from the U.S. and you’re either Muslim or pro-democracy European, you’re likely on the enemies list. If you’re a non-partisan career civil servant in a public institution, you're definitely on the enemies list.

He uses this enemies list to justify actions that slash federal budgets, cancel bipartisan policies aimed at climate action, defund programs for rural development and infrastructure, and drastically reduce the number of federal workers. There’s little strategic coherence to this—it’s largely governance by grievance, fueled by elitism, sexism, racism, and disgust for the working class and the poor.

In his tariff speech this week, Trump brought his usual braggadocio and bullshit to the podium. He spent an hour extolling the era of the robber barons, claiming his “golden age” economic policies would somehow benefit working people even as inflation makes it harder to pay the bills. He promised farmers would somehow “win” despite a combination of decreased farm income and rising input costs. And he clumsily argued that tariffs would somehow replace a lot of income taxes as a revenue source.

To legally enact the tariffs, Trump declared an economic “emergency” giving him the authority to sidestep Congress, even though the Constitution grants Congress the authority over budgets, spending, and taxes. Trump can get away with it because, from experience, he knows he’s above the law. From experience, he knows that Republicans are too chickenshit to challenge him, even when they disagree with him privately.

This matters to all of us, but as a rural reporter and writer, I’ll focus on how Trump’s policies and government-bashing are impacting rural America:

• Tariff-induced inflation: Rural people will see rising costs for groceries, tools, building materials, cars and trucks, electronics, prescription drugs, clothing and shoes, household goods, and more. Rural businesses will face higher prices for the things they rely on to provide goods and services.

• Fewer federal workers: Rural Americans will experience harder-to-access, lower-quality services from essential government institutions such as the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Medicare and Medicaid, the National Weather Service, Interior Department, and agencies that protect rural people from corporate exploitation.

• Reduced federal investment in rural communities: Even with a slowing or contracting economy, Trump and his appointees are canceling and delaying previously issued government contracts under the false narrative of “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Rural projects, and the jobs that come with them, are being threatened. Things on the chopping block: solar and wind energy projects, water and sanitation infrastructure in communities with large populations of Black, Latino, and Indigenous people, farmers raising local produce and meat for food banks and schools, rural high-speed internet build-outs, conservation projects that cut pollution, and public or cooperative utilities that provide affordable electricity and water to rural people.

This list is far from exhaustive, but it highlights the real ways Trump is impacting rural America—and we’re just getting started. With nearly four years still ahead of us, Trump’s war on the public sector, his enemies list, his unchecked power, his chaotic leadership, and his relentless grievances are the real emergency.

As for the Democrats, they’ve failed so far to develop a unified, strategic response to Trump. Internal squabbles, poor advice from consultants and pundits, and external pronouncements of “Democrats in disarray” all contribute to their struggles.

Democratic division on economic policy and lack of cohesion was made abundantly clear this week. With tariffs as an opening, many Democrats sounded like the free traders that gave us NAFTA, hollowed out manufacturing towns, and contributed to the race-to-bottom that so many voters are pissed off about. Trying to win by embracing free trade is just going to further erode the party’s former union and working class base.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with tariffs. I support tariffs or import bans on Brazilian beef raised on former rainforest land, for instance. Tariffs on goods produced in sweatshops paying starvation wages from somewhere in Southeast Asia? Hell yes. Tariffs on Vietnamese seafood raised in ways that pollute drinking water and destroy aquatic ecosystem? Absolutely. Sure, Trump’s approach to tariffs is ridiculous, but so is his approach to agriculture, wildfire management, public health, and energy. That shouldn’t rule out tariffs as a potential economic tool Democrats could deploy to protect the U.S. economy while promoting out-of-fashion values internationally like human rights, corporate accountability, and peace.

Anybody paying attention knows that “the party that’s good for the economy” mantle is truly up for grabs. The fact that Republicans are consistently seen by voters as the party that’s “good for the economy” is mind boggling. Their track record of exploding deficits, slower-to-negative job creation, and policies that enrich the rich at the expense of the working class is embarrassing. Yet the Democrats still can’t win “on the economy.”

In my view, that’s because Democrats focus on abstract ideas like an “opportunity agenda” instead of directly addressing issues like raising the minimum wage to $17.55 an hour. They talk about “abundance” rather than taxing billionaires to pay for my son’s Medicaid and my Grandma’s kidney meds. They talk about climate change as an “existential threat” when in reality it’s a pollution problem that can be solved by millions of workers who clean up messes, build things, and fix things.

Opportunity and abundance may sound nice, but they don’t put food on the table. Existential threats might sound scary, but they don’t change any minds. None of these word salads mean anything tangible, nor do they motivate people to go to the ballot box (or the mailbox) to vote out the scoundrels extracting our communities’ wealth, labor, and our local resources.

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The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.