Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Conservative analyst Jessica Riedl says tariffs damage economies by "raising prices, distorting markets, and encouraging foreign retaliation" against US exports, but Americans don't see the "swamp-infested cronyism" as lobbyists "seek exemptions for individual businesses." These businesses, she said, include the farming industry, whose participants knowingly voted for the tariffs they now want to be excluded from.

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During President Donald Trump's first term, farmers nabbed $24 billion to compensate themselves for retaliatory tariffs resulting from Trump's trade war. This included China's 25 percent retaliatory tariff on U.S. soybeans.

"Then, in 2024, even as candidate Trump promised a more aggressive trade war that could cripple the farm economy, rural voters nonetheless preferred Trump to Kamala Harris by a 30-point margin. Trump earned a staggering 78 percent of the vote in the 444 counties most heavily dependent on farming," said Riedl, a senior fellow with conservative think tank Manhattan Institute. " ... In short, farm country voted overwhelmingly to unleash a new trade war, and now these same farmers and their political leaders want taxpayers to finance another round of bailouts to protect them from the consequences of their own votes."

So, they're so miserable and bitter they vote for everyone and anyone else to suffer, but expect those same people to pick up the tab to reduce or prevent their suffering?

It's so blatantly bad, even a Conservative analyst torches them:

"What happened to the Republican belief in individual accountability?" Riedl demands. "Republicans love to lecture low-income voters that poverty is a moral failing, and they argue that shielding poor families from the consequences of their poverty-inducing decisions will undermine the necessary incentives to change their behavior. Apparently, such tough-love approaches do not apply to Republican voters, who are always quick to explain why their own taxpayer bailouts and welfare payments are different."

It's interesting how the deepest moral rot is in the segment of the electorate who is most quick to claim a moral high ground. Meanwhile, to everyone but them, they're easily seen as the greedy, selfish, miserable freeloaders they are.

#1 | Posted by jpw at 2025-05-28 10:22 AM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

"What happened to the Republican belief in individual accountability?"

That was only ever a cudgel to punish their enemies.

They have never applied it to themselves.

They overwhelmingly support a President who never took accountability for our national COVID response.

#2 | Posted by snoofy at 2025-05-28 12:15 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

And by "farmers" you mean Giant Agri-business.

#3 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2025-05-29 11:33 AM | Reply

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