Written By: Anton Sawyer
Biden Keeping Trump Tariffs Showing The Parties As Being One & The Same
Since the beginning of our nation, the concepts of right and/or wrong have become weaponized pejoratives by both of the major American political parties. Since then, "moral correctness" has been used to justify everything from allowing equal marriage rights to come about on a national level, to being a tool used by those who have perpetrated mass genocides.
In this article, I’m going to look at this concept of moral correctness by scrutinizing the current political party in power of the presidency—the democrats. More concisely, I'm going to dissect how they are using this concept of morality to shift the focus off where the systemic issues lay, and on to more ideologically pleasing pastures.
In an attempt to maintain complete transparency, all research and statistical fact-checking for all articles can be found in the bibliography linked here.
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You may think everything I'm about to cover regarding the liberals' intentions is of paramount importance and needs to be addressed—no matter the cost. You may think that it's nothing short of highway robbery. Yet, when you get down to brass tacks, it’s really about the manipulation of numbers, money, the lack of nuance, and shading what the average person feels is acceptable when it pertains to the greater good.
Between the Trump-era tariffs to the onslaught of Covid-19, the Biden administration has opted to keep certain programs open. Programs that were a consistent attack of his during his 2020 presidential run, much to the chagrin of his supporters. The taxes generated from these dubious sources will still retain the money from those programs and then essentially siphon the money they bear into the programs the Biden administration is championing. Overall, we are looking at a classic case of “do the ends justify the means?”
The first thing we need to look at is the Trump-era tariffs and what their economic impact has been, especially as it pertains to farmers and the building industry.
You have to accept that the tariffs imposed in the Trump administration were ultimately disastrous and its effects are still being felt to this day. Per a 2021 report done by the National Association of Home Builders, skyrocketing lumber prices in 2020 and early 2021 caused the average price of a new single-family home to increase by nearly $30,000. The latest framing lumber prices are down significantly from their peak in May but are trending upward yet again. Though these numbers are staggering, it was the American farmers that got hit the hardest by the tariffs and required the most financial wizardry when it came to making sense of the balance books.
Government payments to farmers surged to historic levels under ex-President Donald Trump as the Agriculture Department flooded the industry with cash to stem the financial losses from Trump’s tariff fights. Per a Politico analysis, direct farm aid climbed each year of Trump’s presidency, from $11.5 billion in 2017 to more than $32 billion in 2019.
When you break down the numbers even further, the picture only becomes grimmer. An article published by the Council on Foreign Relations showed that 92% of Trump’s China tariff proceeds went to bail out angry farmers. Since 2018, Trump has repeatedly insisted that China pays the tariffs he has imposed on Chinese imports.
This claim is false—the tariffs are paid entirely by US importers. His advisers, such as Peter Navarro, knowing the claim is false, have tried to defend him, and the tariffs, by arguing that China pays the tariffs indirectly, through currency depreciation and lowering export prices.
These arguments are also false, as well as illogical—since the advisers also claim that such Chinese behavior benefits China and hurts the United States. In 2018 and ’19, Trump authorized payments to US farmers of $28 billion to offset their losses from Chinese trade retaliation. And payouts to farmers battered by Chinese retaliation have eaten up over 92% of the trade-war tax proceeds.
It’s possible that when looking at all the numbers, one could immediately jump to some conclusions. First off, most are from before the Covid-19 pandemic and don’t look at where we are at in 2021 and where we’re headed in the near future. These are all valid questions given that America currently has a farm economy that’s rapidly heating up after years of decline. Fueled by the fact that US farm exports to China are expected to hit a record $31.5 billion during President Joe Biden's first year in office, the US Agriculture Department said in the spring of 2021. That's $4.5 billion higher than the department forecast in November 2020. US farm sales and shipments to China have surged since late last year, most notably for corn, the USDA said.
If everything is going so well, then where’s the problem?
Well, not all that money is being diverted into legislation that will see those funds go back into the pockets of the average taxpayer because of clever numerical deceptions that are happening right before our eyes. This is going to need a little context first.
As I’ve written in the past, Biden is not afraid to throw money (or reparations) at a problem instead of trying to rectify the systemic problems causing the inequality.
A recent example was in June of 2021 when a federal judge blocked the Biden administration from making loan forgiveness payments to minority farmers as part of a $4 billion program intended to address a long history of racial injustice in American farming. Known as Section 1005, the program was created as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Congress passed in March. It was intended to provide debt relief to “socially disadvantaged farmers”—defined by the government as those who are Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander. “Section 1005’s rigid, categorical, race-based qualification for relief is the antithesis of flexibility,” Judge Marcia Morales Howard of U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, in Jacksonville wrote. “The debt relief provision applies strictly on racial grounds irrespective of any other factor. Every person who identifies him or herself as falling within a socially disadvantaged group who has a qualifying farm loan with an outstanding balance as of January 1, 2021, receives up to 120% debt relief—and no one else receives any debt relief.” Even Biden spokespeople concur that this was the plan. Earlier in 2021, in an interview with Axios on HBO, President Joe Biden‘s senior advisor, Cedric Richmond, confirmed that the White House plans “to start acting now” on reparations for African-American citizens. "We have to do stuff now to improve the plights, status, and future empowerment of black people all around the country."
Looking at the legislation of each state that has allowed these disparities and finding out which laws are being exploited specifically that have allowed racism to proliferate for this long would be a good start. Seeing how grants are dispersed through federal means and finding out which ones have a history of exclusionary tactics and looking at which legislation they are exploiting is another good option.
I’m not an expert, and I know that there are a thousand more elements than the ones I’m presenting with these broad strokes, but I also know that just throwing money at a systemic issue changes nothing at the end of the day. I feel that it’s easier to rip out the root of the infected tooth than to just keep putting numbing cream on it.
And this is where we are at.
During 2021 Biden has rolled back aluminum and other tariffs, all while increasing others on lumber from places like Canada, so it isn’t like the US government has been sitting around doing nothing as it pertains to tariffs in general. As we saw earlier, the agriculture industry in America is flourishing, but the subsidies are still at higher rates than they should be. That’s because the DNC has other plans for those funds, other than being put back into your pocket. Currently, Democrats are circulating a $28 billion plan to dramatically expand existing farm bill conservation programs while authorizing $5 billion in new direct payments to farmers who plant cover crops (totaling $32 billion—or roughly the same amount of the Trump-era direct farmers' aid due to the tariffs). The cover crop payments would be routed through the Farm Service Agency, according to the document circulating among House Democrats. The $28 billion is intended to be included in a massive budget reconciliation bill that Democrats are trying to pass to address climate change and domestic spending priorities. "We are leading the way on helping farmers tackle the climate crisis with a historic investment of $28 billion in the Build Back Better Budget for climate-smart agriculture—the largest investment in conservation since the Dust Bowl," Democratic Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow from Michigan said.
It seems somewhat suspicious that there are certain tariffs that Biden has allowed to continue throughout his presidency, and he is now trying to put through a climate change bill that will allocate a number of funds that come incredibly close to those Trump was dishing out. This is a classic “rob from Peter to pay Paul” motif. And that’s why I'm writing this article today. I don’t care if you support ending climate change or not, the problem I have is when a leader has a penchant for trying to use a bunch of political and back-door Washington gobbledygook in order to build the perfect smokescreen against the commoner so funds can be allocated for a pet project.
We can argue all day about the morality of “do the ends justify the means?” There will be people who see what Biden is doing as noble, and necessary to the saving of the human species. To them, I have this to say. The problem I have is when you paint your predecessor as an evil person whose policies have crushed the American way of life, and then continue to enact some of the most detrimental of those same policies by selling their outcome in a different light to the general public, all the while you feel justified in doing so because you are morally correct.
Isn’t this the exact same reasoning that’s used by the GOP when it comes to banning the freedom to protest?
Isn’t this the same reasoning that the GOP uses when it comes to vaccine mandates?
Isn’t this the same reasoning that the GOP uses when it comes to …?
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