(Disclaimer: I voted against Trump and anyone who supported him in my state.)

  • @_bcron_
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    226 hours ago

    Tariffs will not only erase the middle class but also erase our topsoil like it’s 1924 all over again if farmers aren’t subsidized and everything is left to go fallow. In terms of dollars we’re pretty even in terms of agricultural imports and exports, but in terms of acreage… We push a shitload of soy, corn, and wheat. We’re more than a little fucked in lots of ways if we’re hit with retaliatory tariffs, but the biggest one is if farmers don’t have any reason to plant crops and don’t have any money to do it, we’re doomed for dustbowl days.

    Don’t even get me started on water, fluoride is one thing but if they start removing a lot of other stuff like phosphate and permanganate the entire country’s municipal water supply will be as bad as Flint MI.

    I’m hoping Trump doesn’t pull off 95% of the stuff he talked about due to unbridled incompetence because if he still manages to pull off 80% of it we’re gonna be fucked

    • @halcyoncmdr
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      116 hours ago

      No they’ll keep things like the farm subsidies, may even expand them. The tariffs will leave those out. That’s the socialism their base is 100% reliant on. They won’t risk turning on the rural farmers until the end when it they’re not a threat. They’ve already shown a complete willingness to ignore absolutely everything else until this point.

      • @_bcron_
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        5 hours ago

        I’m hoping. Last trade war, Trump basically rolled out of bed one morning and decided to try it on China as some temporary transient thing in order to convey that the US has a lot of leverage (and it blew up in our faces), which is an entirely different beast than unilateral tariffs as part of fiscal policy. I have no clue how much it’d cost to just subsidize everything in perpetuity but I hope it isn’t some ridiculous sum.

        He’ll probably do something like allowing us to sell semiconductors to foreign nations in exchange for dropping tariffs on agricultural exports which is also really fucking boneheaded. The art of the deal, giving away the only shit that has lots of value for us. China outpacing the US in tech is something Europe wouldn’t want, but if we cut ties with Europe they’d probably warm up to China and we’d become a really big insular nation that can’t even sustain its economy as is

    • @Sanctus
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      66 hours ago

      If he manages to pull off even 25% we will be fucked until the last soul melts on the 200 degree pavement. Its never the time for rehressionism, but now is especially a bad time.

      • @_bcron_
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        86 hours ago

        We’re already net exporter of petroleum but they’re intending to carve up our parks and stuff, even though we won’t be able to sell it for more than the cost of producing it. Everyone will slam us with tariffs and go to other countries for their fix, and it’ll be cheaper than bottled water for us.

        The idiots who don’t understand what a pronoun is and are terrified of their kids learning about them in English class will have cheap gas, but their kids will endure a literal hell for it.

        And they’ll think Trump’s doing a good job for all of it, blame some totally unrelated shit for our interest rate being at 25%

        • @Sanctus
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          56 hours ago

          I’m over it. Be fucking stupid. Sell shit out for cheap. Stain the future with the blood of our children. We are out of time on the climate. The Earth will swallow us as our madness consumes us. Its a triple pronged rape of humanity’s future.

    • @stoly
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      45 hours ago

      Ending farming and allowing nature to return would prevent a dust bowl. Allowing a field to go fallow means that a whole lot of plants start growing.

      • @_bcron_
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        11 hour ago

        It might do that in some fields but it’d take ages in those spots where all you see is corn as far as the eye can see. Might be switchgrass growing in a drainage ditch but it’d just creep in like capillary action on a paper towel. You’d need to have people out there casting seed at least

        • @stoly
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          153 minutes ago

          That’s because it is soil that has been destroyed through decades of mismanagement. That is what caused the previous dust bowl.