Viewpoint: Trump’s Wack-amole approach to trade worries ag

Carl Davis

Trump’s political ploy to significantly increase Argentina beef imports should force our four AWOL Republican Congressmen to explain why they are supporting the ambitions of strongman President Javier Milei over the economic needs of Montana citizens.

This time, a potential downturn in our ranching economy can’t be blamed on high fuel and feed costs; labor shortages; fake meat proponents; red meat alarmists; anti-grazing environmentalists; climate change activists; corporate feedlots and Big Grocery; the damn federal government; or Joe Biden and the Dems.

Nope, by voting hugely for Trump in 2024 and his authoritarian Project 2025, ranchers and farmers bought a whole world of trouble all by themselves.

A rich city slicker, Trump doesn’t give a cow puck about any of it. He operates by ego and chaos. But a Montana cow-calf economy ruptured by a flood of foreign beef may inspire Republican family ranchers to set aside their stubborn culture war politics and change voting patterns when midterms come around. Their livelihoods could well depend on it.

Who knows where Trump’s specious trade wars and whack-a-mole economic policies will lead next? They’re unlikely to bode well for Montana agriculture.

One thing is certain, Daines, Downing, Sheehy and Zinke will happily follow Trump’s lead, preaching the false hopes of MAGA, enriching themselves, and leaving many Montanans in the economic dust, modeling President McKinley’s late 20th Century Gilded Age, to which Trump dreams and aspires.