[SutterBrother]

North Dakota and it's 800,000 people (and 2 senators, same number as California) voted 67% for Trump. Mostly farmers. Mostly now f-ed.

What a shame.


Read NPR while you still can...

Half of all the soybeans grown in the region are sold to China, and almost all of the fertilizer is brought in from Canada, which is also imposing tariffs in response to President Trump's.

For more than two decades now, American farmers have operated under global trade agreements, courtesy of carefully negotiated business relationships brokered over time, according to Greg Lardy, vice president for agricultural affairs at North Dakota State University in Fargo. That means there's no longer the processing capacity in the U.S. for all the crops that are grown here.

"And that's not a change that's going to happen in a matter of months; that takes years," Lardy says.

The big deal is that many farmers in the country are still recovering from a trade war with China in 2018 that left grain in the bins and sent prices tumbling. The first Trump administration paid out billions in farm subsidies to keep farmers afloat back then.

This spring, Justin Sherlock says he's in the red going into planting season — and worried he might not even get financing to farm.

"You can't take that to the banker and say, well, our political leadership must have a plan, so give me a loan," Sherlock says, chuckling somewhat sardonically.