The Attack on American Farmers Has Begun

 Raids in California and New Jersey

Trump’s attack on American farmers has begun. A few days ago, the Border Patrol staged a series of dragnet raids to arrest undocumented immigrants in Bakersfield, California. Bakersfield is a major center of the citrus industry in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The valley is the source of a large share of the produce consumed in the United States, and the farms there are completely dependent on immigrant labor. At least half of the farm workers in the valley are undocumented. Without the labor of undocumented workers, the farms would not be able to operate; they would go out of business, and the immediate result of the raids showed just how that could happen. The workers who had not been arrested were afraid to leave their homes, and so, they didn’t show up for work, and there was no one available to replace them. The idea that there are thousands of native-born, Americans of any race just waiting for opportunities to work as agricultural laborers is a fantasy.

Farms like those in the San Joaquin Valley cannot operate without workers. If the raids continue, California’s agriculture will have to shut down. The farmers will go bankrupt, and Bakersfield along with communities like Fresno and Modesto will be ruined. Moreover, this week’s raids have not been confined to California. A few days ago, five hundred people were arrested in a raid on a workplace in New Jersey.

What About Wisconsin?

My state of Wisconsin – like many states in the Midwest – is an agricultural state. Wisconsin’s dairy farms are very heavily dependent on undocumented immigrant labor, and without that labor, they will be unable to operate. Moreover, farms are not the only parts of our agricultural system that depend on immigrant labor. Chicken packing plants and slaughterhouses use huge amounts of immigrant labor, and without that labor the plants will close.  Communities all over Wisconsin and the Midwest will be ruined if they lose their immigrant workers. The communities’ businesses will lose their customers; the schools will lose their students; towns will lose their tax bases; home values will fall.

Other Industries Will Suffer

We should not imagine that agriculture will be the only industry to suffer. Construction also depends heavily on immigrant workers and cannot function without them. Florida discovered in 2023 what can happen when immigrant workers are afraid to go to work. In Florida's case, they were able to move to other states, but Trump's attack is national.

In rural communities, the farmers and their workers are customers of local businesses. Grocery stores, clothing stores, gas stations, restaurants and farm supply businesses will all suffer. Many will be bankrupted, and that means that communities will lose much of their tax base.

We Will All Suffer

We should not imagine that rural communities will be the only ones to suffer. What will happen to the price of fruits and vegetables if California’s farms shut down? What will happen to the price of milk if Wisconsin’s dairy farms shut down? What will happen to the price of chicken if the country’s chicken processing plants shut down?  The prices of all of these commodities will rise because there will be a sharp drop in their supply. We will all have to pay more for our food.

In theory, we could compensate for the drop in the supply of food by purchasing it from other countries, but our president has promised to impose tariffs on imports from outside the United States. So, food from elsewhere would be expensive both because of the cost of shipping it here and because of the tariffs that our president has promised to impose on imports.

If construction workers are deported, fewer houses and apartments will be built, and this will occur at a time when the cost of housing has become a serious, national problem. Importing houses from abroad is not really a possibility. So, we will all pay a high price for Trump's policy.

Restaurants in the United States depend heavily on undocumented workers. If they are deported, many restaurants will be unable to find the workers they need, and they will go out of business. That will damage the restaurant supply businesses that serve those restaurants.

Contact Your Representatives

Trump’s attack on American farmers and on other businesses is an attack on all American people. We should not tolerate our elected government’s attacking us all. We should resist. If you care about your own well-being or that of your community, you should contact your congressional representatives and tell them to oppose the insanity of these raids. You can find your representatives on this page. Find and contact elected officials | USAGov

Resisting Effectively

We Must Not Be Distracted

 We are in for four years of a Republican administration led by Donald Trump, and we have to think about how to resist effectively. We can do so if we remember what the key issues really are, and if we refuse to be distracted by Mr. Trump’s craziness. He is very good at floating crazy ideas that Democrats and the media then respond to. He has renamed the Gulf of Mexico, and he says that he wants to take back the Panama Canal and take over Greenland. These nutty actions and proposals and the responses to them then fill the media and thereby provide a screen behind which Republicans in Congress can enact policies that will be windfalls for his billionaire supporters and harm the American people. We must avoid getting caught up in the discussions that provide the screen. We must focus on the policies that really threaten our democracy.

Policies That Threaten Our Democracy

The Republicans have shown already that they are willing to allow the whole country to suffer from the effects of climate change in order to make more money for the oil and gas industry. They can also enact tariffs that will provoke a trade war. They can gut Medicare and Social Security under the guise of saving them.  They can destabilize our economy by reducing the regulation of banks. They can cause irreparable harm to our planet by eliminating the incentives to move from fossil fuels to non-polluting energy sources. They can cause a recession by deporting a large share of our work force.

Mr. Trump will undoubtedly try to do such things if only because he has committed himself to doing them. Some of them will create resistance within his own party. Big American agricultural interests who will be hurt by a trade war will resist tariffs. The same interests will resist any attempt to deport a large share of their work force. Other actions will be supported by his party. Deregulation of banks and promotion of fossil fuels will be enthusiastically supported. So, will the gutting of Social Security and Medicare.

This Is What We Need To Resist

These are the things that we need to resist. We should work with Republicans to resist tariffs and the mass deportation of workers, and we should oppose Republicans on the deregulation of banks, the promotion of fossil fuels and the gutting of Social Security and Medicare. We should do these things not only to keep our economy from tanking but also because that will be the most effective way of preserving our democracy.

The Real Danger To Our Democracy

Many people believe that Mr. Trump is a serious danger to American democracy, and they are right. He is a danger to democracy but not merely because of his well-known authoritarian tendencies. His economic policies present a far greater danger to democracy because, as Martin Wolf argues, democracy and capitalism can coexist only if the capitalism provides a decent standard of living for the bulk of the people. If capitalism fails to do so, the people are bound to become disillusioned with a democracy which appears to be rigged against them, and they will support authoritarian politicians like Trump who promise to make their lives better.

Our democracy is already precarious because so much of our national income goes to the top 1% of our population. Our country today is much richer than it was in the 1960s, but millions of our people are poorer than they were then. If the Republicans are able to enact the economic policies that Trump has said that he intends to enact, our national income will be even more concentrated in the top 1%, and the plight of our people will become even worse.

Thus, the real danger to our democracy is not merely that Trump will find ways to increase his power at the expense of the other branches of government. The real danger is that he and his party will destroy the conditions that make democracy possible. We need to do all that we can to prevent that from happening.