Break out the tiny violins: Soybean farmers in distress

In between conference calls today, I was browsing the news sites, looking for a distraction, and I stumbled across this gem:

Apparently, the "real" Americans are getting worried that their orange hued savior might not have their best interests at heart.

First up are two North Dakota farmers who lay in 2,300 acres of soybeans:

On a windy September morning, Josh and Jordan Gackle huddled to discuss the looming crisis facing their North Dakota soybean farm.

For the first time in the history of their 76-year-old operation, their biggest customer — China — had stopped buying soybeans. Their 2,300-acre soybean farm is projected to lose $400,000 in 2025. Soybeans that would normally be harvested and exported to Asia are now set to pile up in large steel bins.

Aw, you planted in the spring, you spent money on fertilizer, and now you've harvested, but the "buyer" isn't actually interested in buying your crop?

Who'd have thunk it? That Trump playing the petulant toddler in chief pitching a fit about his precious tariffs is causing you heartburn?

You know, he of the "trade wars are easy to win", and "we're gonna have soo much free money from the Chinese and all these countries that are taking advantage of the good ol' US of A."

Yeah, how's that workin' out?

Also, I would bet my bottom dollar that both Josh and Jordan got into the booth at their polling station last November and yanked that lever for Trump/Vance, because 'murica and shit.

Anyhow, how did they get to this self pity?

Since President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in February, Beijing has retaliated by halting all purchases of American soybeans.

Gee, nobody could have predicted this response, I mean those poor Chinese people had no choice but to buy traincar after traincar of these superior North Dak0tan soybeans.

You know that there is no way that anyone else could fill the gap.

Wait, I am hearing from the broadcast booth that indeed Brazil has been able to ramp up output to fill the massive maw of Chinese demand for soybeans.

Nobody could have predicted this, right? Right? RIGHT?

Clearly, North Dakota plants and harvests a fuckton of soybeans, and a full 70% of their crop used to be shipped to China. I mean that isn't risky, right?

I mean, how could they have possibly known how much of a shit-show this would be...

[N. Dakota farmers ] exported more than 70 percent of its soybeans to China before Trump unveiled the new tariffs this year. Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers that depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States.

Of course, nobody in the Trump administration could possibly be profiting by this fuckery. right?

Meet Sec. Treas. Scott Bessent. This wad of useless fuck has amassed thousands of acres of farmland in <check notes> North Dakota. He then rents this land to farmers to work the land. Sorta like a medieval Feudal Lord, whose serfs worked the land and paid taxes and tribute.

The Treasury Secretary owns thousands of acres of North Dakota farmland, worth up to $25 million. The properties grow soybeans and corn in a state that exports most of its agricultural products to China. The investments have earned Mr. Bessent as much as $1 million in rental income annually, according to his financial disclosure filings.

So, if the current landowner/farmers go kaput, they sell that land, and then Scotty Bessent is able to buy it up at a distressed price, to then rent out to future farmers who would presumably work the land, and pay a portion of their profits to Bessent, so that he can buy more land ... ah yeah, that virtuous cycle of capitalism.

To farmers in North Dakota, the forces of high interest rates, high input costs and falling prices are reminiscent of the 1980s farm crisis, which hobbled U.S. agriculture for nearly a decade and hollowed out much of rural America.

“The stress level is much higher now than it was then,” Jordan Gackle, 44, said in an interview. “If we keep this going for very long, then we are going to see the kind of foreclosures that were happening.”

Standing before a field of soybeans a few weeks away from harvest, he added: “All of it is unnecessary. The U.S. was not forced into this by anybody.”

Here's where I will disagree with Mr. Gackle. We were forced into this by numbnuts like you and your brother who fucking voted this mango tinged Mussolini into office, gleefully sticking it to the "shit-libs."

You deserve all the pain you are set to receive. I am sick and tired of people who VOTED FOR THIS whinging that they didn't know.

Trump TELEGRAPHED this throughout his campaign, and you decided that he wouldn't negatively impact you. Or you counted on the bailouts that Trump did for the farmers who were devastated by these idiotic and ill-advised tariffs in his first term.

You literally didn't learn a fucking thing.

You fucked around, you're finding out, and if you need sympathy, look it up. It is somewhere between "Shit" and "Syphilus" in the Miriam Webster dictionary that is probably holding up the couch in your living room.

There is more, and the Times is doing way too much to make these people seem sympathtic, victims of the short fingered vulgarian's whims, but don't fall for it, they asked for this, and they shall reap what they sowed.