At LEAST $20 billion

 

MAGA regrets

 They're already here.

The agriculture bait and switch

The Department of Labor’s new rule cutting farmworker wages bluntly states that souped-up immigration enforcement has devastated the agricultural workforce and created a significant “risk of supply shock-induced food shortages,” according to a document filed in the Federal Register last week. The document also indicates that American workers are simply not interested in and do not have the skills to perform agricultural jobs, at odds with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s claim that the farm workforce will soon be 100 percent American.

“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce, results in significant disruptions to production costs and threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers,” the document says, adding that “this threat will grow” given new federal funding for immigration enforcement under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The rule seeks to bring in guest workers through the H-2A program at lower wages, potentially reducing wages across the spectrum for all farmworkers, regardless of legal status. But in order to do so quickly, Trump’s Department of Labor is surprisingly citing the downside risks of its own president’s mass deportation program, arguing that it is causing “immediate dangers to the American food supply.”

  Prospect

Does Trump know they're saying that?

Only one of two things can be true: Either Trump’s Labor Department actually believes that Trump’s immigration enforcement is destroying the agricultural sector and threatening food security, or they are pretending this threat is real in order to crush wages for both foreign and domestic agricultural workers. Neither look particularly good.

[...]

In some states like California, Washington, New York, and Arizona, the resulting wages for H-2A workers will be well below state minimum wages.

[...]

THE RULE IN QUESTION CONCERNS WHAT IS KNOWN as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR), which is set for H-2A agricultural workers. H-2A gives one-year visas to foreign nationals to work in agriculture. They must work for the grower who sponsors the visa, and they lack basic worker protections that domestic workers have, like the ability to get overtime pay. The program has been called a form of slavery by critics in the past.

H-2A, which was established in the 1980s, has evolved from an occasional program to fill gaps in the workforce to one increasingly relied on by employers. [...] There is no cap on the program, so agribusiness can bring in an unlimited number of foreign workers.

Because H-2A workers don’t have bargaining rights, federal guidelines effectively set their wages.

[...]

In addition, the new rule allows farm employers to charge H-2A workers for their housing, which was not allowed before.

Sounds very on brand for Trump and today's GOP.

[T]he Labor Department definitively rejects the idea of Americans replacing the missing workers. “The Department does not believe American workers currently unemployed or marginally employed will make themselves readily available in sufficient numbers to replace large numbers of aliens,” the filing states, adding that agricultural work involves “a distinct set of skills and is among the most physically demanding and hazardous occupations in the U.S. labor market.”

[...]

The Labor Department even claims that broadly advertising agricultural jobs, which is required under the H2-A rules, has not led to a boost in applications from U.S. workers. This is a bit of a fiction; workers who apply often do not receive jobs, and nobody is really checking to see if applications are coming in. “The system isn’t set up to prove that there’s a labor shortage of U.S. workers,” said Costa, of EPI.

In the end, the Labor Department concludes, the only way to protect agricultural employers from disaster and consumers from rising prices and food shortages is to slash wages in the H-2A program to make it more viable to bring in workers. This is an odd response to a workforce crisis, since cutting wages across the sector will likely drive existing workers to look elsewhere for jobs. In fact, farm employers in Florida fear that H-2A foreign workers won’t apply for these jobs anymore because the wages are so low.

[...]

[I]mmigration enforcement is working hand in hand with the H-2A program. Farm employers do not fear losing their immigrant workforce because they can import them, now at lower wages, from abroad. Farmworkers trying to organize have said they’ve been told explicitly that they will be replaced with H-2A workers, in fact.

[...]

That’s certainly not the way MAGA sells immigration enforcement. For years they have said that Americans should benefit from open jobs in the United States. But instead, their favorite administration is enabling the mass importation of exploitable workers, and blaming their own immigration enforcement actions for giving them no alternative.

Agribusinesses “are very capitalist except when it comes to hiring and paying workers, then they become the most left-wing central planners I’ve ever seen,” Costa said. “They want the free market to prevail except when it comes to paying the workers. In that case we need government intervention immediately.”

So despicable. 

America last

 

Destroyer of worlds

 If Trump 2.0 intended to destroy the country (and maybe the planet), what would they do differently than they are doing now?

The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions.

[...]

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

[...]

The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.

[...]

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions.

[...]

Two current NASA employees also confirmed that NASA mission leaders were told to make termination plans for projects that would lose funding under President Trump's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, or FY 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The employees asked to remain anonymous, because they were told they would be fired if they revealed the request.

  NPR

 They are our elected administration.

Also...anything Biden did, Trump will undo, regardless of its success or usefulness.

Arbeit macht frei

 

True, but...

 

I wouldn't be so quick to blame this particular capitalist/communist program on Trump.  The government has been doing this for decades, and Big Ag has been reliably the beneficiary.  Small farmers have been dying out since the 60s, at least in part because of these subsidies to farming corporations.

We have no shortage of other things that can be legitimately blamed on Trump.

And so it goes

 

Washington state's huge apple production is also at risk.  They're picked by immigrants.  Fruit and vegetable pickers in California? Immigrants.

If you think imported canned fruits (yuck) will cover it, don't forget the tariffs on steel.  Your fruit consumption is going to be a lot more expensive, or a lot less, period.

Chaos 24/7

Trump said Sunday that a new wave of raids would target immigrants in Democrat-run cities — and Monday there were signs that farms, hotels and restaurants again will be subject to raids.

[...]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were told Monday that agents should resume raids on hotels and restaurants, but also agricultural businesses, the Washington Post reported.

  Axios

Really bad move

 

If he wants to starve out poor people, this works in tandem with his tariffs on imports.  Problem there is it wrecks the economy for middle class people, too.  Oh, and most of the poor people in this country are in Trump land.

Is anybody in the Trump admin looking at the future?

We always bail out the farmers and the bankers

 And one time, the automakers. Everybody else can go fuck themselves.

UPDATE 06:55 pm:

Trump winning bigly in the China trade war

 

Prediction: Dems will cave

 

MAHA haha

 

With the appointment of RFK Jr to the Health Department and the chainsaw massacre of the Department of Agriculture, you might be forgiven for thinking they're trying to kill us all.

More good news for MAGA farmers and voters

 

That oughta hit well in Trumpland.

ICE raids

The president of California Citrus Mutual said that 25% of their workers did not show up for work on Tuesday and 75% did not show up yesterday. He said new raids “have sent shockwaves through out community. People aren’t going to work, kids aren’t going to school.” He said that the new Trump ICE raids are not targeting people suspected of committing crimes - they are racially profiling and looking for anyone.

  Meidas Touch

MAGA are going to be surprised when their groceries get even more expensive.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 11:11 am:

Why would farmers still vote for Trump?

Another case of Republicans voting against their own interests.

[Small farmers] were already doing badly, and then came the tariff wars with China and the loss of a major market. There has been Trump's Market Facilitation Program (MFP), which is a bailout for farmers, but according to an analysis, the biggest operators sucked up the bulk of the money, putting small ones ever further behind.

[...]

[T]he top 10% of recipients—"the largest, most profitable industrial-scale farms in the country," according to the EWG—received half of all the dollars spent, in the form of multi-million dollar payments. The top 1% of recipients received 13% of payments. The bottom 80% received an average of $5,136.

[...]

When the owners don't have outside income that helps underwrite the costs, then 76.2% of low-sales farms (less than $150,000 a year) have below critical operating profit margin, according to the USDA ERS. From $150,000 to $349,999 gross income, 55.8% are below critical margins. And so it goes until you reach very large farms ($5 million or more) where only 24.6% are below critical.

In other words, small family farms (90% of all family farms) are in deep trouble normally. These latest shocks are helping to drive up farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides, as Chuck Jones wrote earlier this year at Forbes.com. These are people who badly need help.

[...]

[T]he farming industry is in dire straits and, you could easily argue, is a national security consideration. Having no food or other vital farm-based products is a disaster waiting to happen.

  Forbes

That was under Trump.

Donald Trump often espoused his love for America's farmers during his presidency.

But after a year under President Joe Biden, farmers say they're actually feeling the love.

[...]

While the focus of the Biden administration has been on its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and more recently the global standoff with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, the farm sector has fared quite well under the new administration, as farmers ease off of government bailouts and see a boost in commodity prices.

[...]

[I]n 2021, the majority of net farm income came from commodity sales and actual production "off the farm." Whereas in 2019, a "big chunk" of the income was coming from Market Facilitation Program payments, which were at the core of the Trump administration's effort to mitigate losses from its disputes with China and other trading partners.

[...]

Net farm income, a broad measure of profits, is estimated to have increased by $15.7 billion in 2020 relative to 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. The agency also forecast net farm income at $116.8 billion in 2021, the highest level since 2013.

[...]

Vincent Smith, a visiting fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said the Trump administration "severely disadvantaged" farmers with an ill-advised trade policy.

[...]

In 2020, Trump won a number of traditionally Republican farm states including Iowa, Texas, North Carolina and Nebraska.

  NBC

Why?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Project 2025 deportations

If immigrants were deported—Trump is proposing massive deportations—what would it mean for [your] grocery bill and access to food.  [...] When Alabama passed its anti-immigrant Bill, people fearing arrest and detention as a prelude to expulsion fled the state. A preliminary assessment in 2011 while the bill was being challenged in court suggested it would cost the state $40 million, shrinking the workforce and the taxpayer base. Alabama’s Agriculture Commissioner said at the time that “the economic hardship to farmers and agribusiness will reverberate throughout Alabama’s economy, as one-fifth of all jobs in our state come from farming.”

By February of 2012, when there was hard data to pull from, the assessment had increased dramatically, suggesting the Bill reduced the state’s GDP by $2.3 to $10.8 billion annually. That’s just one state. Imagine it played out across the country.

[...]

That year, produce skyrocketed in price. Farmers saw crops rot in the field because they couldn’t hire workers to bring them in. That impacted all of us for a time—ultimately, significant parts of the law were rejected by the courts. Imagine the country, or large swaths of it, impacted by labor shortages across multiple sectors: food is more expensive, wait times for fixing storm damage to homes gets longer and longer, population numbers that drive funding for school contracts decrease, and so forth. Mass deportations may sound good to conservatives, especially as a campaign tactic, but understanding what that really looks like for all of us is a bleak prospect.

[...]

Take a look, even if it’s just through the table of contents to decide what you might want to read first. Or look around the website itself, to understand what the project is and who is behind it.

  Joyce Vance

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Sadly, knee-jerk America will elect Republicans

They'll blame Democrats, not Putin.

The war in Ukraine will result in expensive food and energy for the next three years, the World Bank has warned, intensifying fears that the global economy is heading for a rerun of the weak growth and high inflation of the 1970s.

In a gloomy analysis, the Washington-based development organisation said there was a risk that persistently high commodity costs lasting until the end of 2024 would lead to stagflation – sluggish activity combined with strong cost of living pressures.

[...]

As a result of trade and production disruptions caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Bank is forecasting a 50% rise in energy prices this year. It expects the price of Brent crude oil to average $100 a barrel in 2022, its highest level since 2013 and an increase of more than 40% compared with 2021. Prices are expected to fall back to $92 in 2023 but will remain well above the five-year average of $60 a barrel.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Give them what they're asking for - what they need