Trump exploits farm crisis to consolidate rural political power amid neoliberal trade policies and corporate agribusiness dominance
Original framing: “Trump makes pitch to farmers hard-hit by tariffs, high prices in Wisconsin” — Al Jazeera
Trump's 'pitch' to farmers is a classic trickster maneuver: he positions himself as the savior while his policies (e.g., 2017 tax cuts for corporations) deepen the very crises he claims to address. Like Hermes, he delivers contradictory messages—tariffs harm farmers but are framed as 'protection,' while corporate subsidies flow to the same agribusinesses that exploit them. The absurdity lies in a president who deregulates pollution while blaming foreign wars for farm failures, ignoring that his administration's energy policies (e.g., ethanol mandates) distort commodity markets.
Trump's visit to Wisconsin is a symptom of a deeper crisis: a neoliberal agricultural system that has systematically disenfranchised small farmers while enriching corporate elites.
The narrative obscures how decades of trade policies, deregulation, and fossil fuel subsidies have created a rigged market where Wisconsin's dairy farmers—once the backbone of the state's economy—now face extinction, mirroring the enclosure of common lands in 18th-century England. The solution lies not in partisan posturing but in dismantling corporate monopolies, redirecting subsidies toward regenerative practices, and centering marginalized voices (Indigenous farmers, Black landowners, migrant workers) in policy design. Wisconsin's future could follow the path of Japan's cooperative models or Zimbabwe's agroecology, but only if the trickster's sleight-of-hand—where crises are framed as partisan issues rather than structural failures—is exposed. The Ho-Chunk Nation's sustainable agriculture initiatives and Organic Valley's cooperative success prove that alternatives exist, but they require political will to scale. The choice is between managed decline under corporate control or a just transition to a food system that serves people and the planet.