ICYMI: North Dakota farmers continue speaking out against trade war, Cramer ignores concerns

 (BISMARCK, ND) – Kevin Cramer just can’t bring himself to stand up for North Dakota farmers and ranchers. Why? Because for Cramer, party loyalty and his political career always come first. And it looks like North Dakota farmers are starting to notice.

This week, the New York Times reported on the deep concerns of North Dakota agricultural producers with the president’s tariffs. And yesterday, Reuters wrote about North Dakota farmers and producers’ growing frustrations with the president’s out-of-touch and reckless trade policies – with one North Dakota farmer saying, “that is not the way to do things.”

Perhaps it’s time for Kevin Cramer to start standing up for North Dakotans instead of just himself? Highlights from the article below:

Reuters: Trump’s looming trade war gives Democrats an opening in farm country

  • “We cannot survive a trade war,” Heitkamp said in a recent interview before an event with women business owners in Jamestown, a city of about 16,000 people in east-central North Dakota. “This kind of disruption to a fragile farm economy is very disturbing.”
  • Heitkamp, locked in a tight re-election fight with Republican challenger Kevin Cramer, has led Democratic attacks on Trump for ignoring the economic threat to the region’s export-dependent farmers. The trade dispute has set off political alarms across the conservative farm belt, putting Republican candidates on the defensive and complicating the party’s fight to retain control of Congress.
  • Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imported aluminum and steel along with other goods drew threats of retaliation from Beijing on a list of U.S. agricultural products, topped by soybeans. The crop is farm country’s most valuable export to China, worth $12 billion last year.
  • Doyle Lentz, 56, who grows wheat, barley, canola and soybeans on his 7,000-acre North Dakota farm, said he was “angry” about Trump’s combative trade stance towards China, one of the U.S. ag sector’s most important customers.
  • “I just don’t understand the approach of holding a gun to someone’s head to make a deal, that is not the way to do things,” said Lentz, a former chairman of the National Barley Growers Association and self-described independent voter.