Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:11 and sunset is 7:38, for 13 hours, 28 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 89 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 2018,  The New York Times and the New Yorker win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for breaking news of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal.

Yesterday’s post, Farmers, cited reporting on the effects of a trade war on farmers. Trump is aware of these concerns, and so he used his Truth Social platform to publish his position on a trade war’s effects on agriculture. Below are Trump’s remarks contrasted with real experiences.

Trump’s post:

Our farmers are GREAT, but because of their GREATNESS, they are always put on the Front Line with our adversaries, such as China, whenever there is a Trade negotiation or, in this case, a Trade War. The same thing happened in my First Term. China was brutal to our Farmers, I these Patriots to just hold on, and a great trade deal was made. I rewarded our farmers with a payment of $28 Billion Dollars, all through the China deal. It was a great transaction for the USA, until Crooked Joe Biden came in and didn’t enforce it. China largely reneged on the deal (although they behaved during the Trump Administration), only buying a portion of what they agreed to buy. They had ZERO respect for the Crooked Biden Administration, and who can blame them for that? Interestingly, they just reneged on the big Boeing deal, saying that they will “not take possession” of fully committed to aircraft. The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!

The farmer John Pihl’s genuine experience with Trump’s subsidies:

The payments were helpful, Pihl said. But they weren’t a fix for the longer-term damage done by Trump’s first-term tariffs.

“That was just for the one year. What about the market loss that continued through his term and into Biden’s term? I think the amount is incredible,” he said.

Of Trump’s remarks:

1. The greatness of farmers has not made them targets; Trump’s trade war has done that.
2. As lifetime farmer John Pihl explains above, Trump’s deal in his first term did not make farmers whole, and that deal was insufficient on its own, apart from the Biden Admin. See also Adriana Belmonte, Trump’s massive farmer bailout failed to make up for the ‘self-inflicted’ trade damage, January 18, 2021. (Trump’s bailout was a failure even before Biden took office.)
3. Trump claims that China has ‘behaved’ during his administration, but he admits in his post that (a) they’ve hit back at Boeing and (b) China has applied huge retaliatory tariffs across the board.

Meanwhile, here’s how ordinary Chinese are depicting the Trump Admin:

Even ordinary TikTok users on the other side of the world have Trumpism’s number.

One can and should oppose the Chinese government without stumbling into an inflationary trade war.

Meanwhile, where did Trump get all those gaudy gold appliqués with which he’s littered the Oval Office? Trump’s vulgar additions are surprisingly similar to what the Chinese sell on Alibaba:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:12 and sunset is 7:37, for 13 hours, 25 minutes of daytime. The moon a waning gibbous with 94 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1922, U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.

Farmers in the rural Midwest and across America will feel the consequences of Trump’s trade war:

Tariffs are making life more expensive for John Pihl. He’s been farming in Northern Illinois for more than 50 years.

“These tariffs are going to affect everything. It’ll affect our parts — it’s just across the board. Which is going to hurt everything,” he said.

Not only do tariffs affect the cost of farm supplies, but they also raise the risk of retaliation against exports of U.S. crops: a double-whammy for farmers like Pihl.

“It’s a good way to lose your customers,” he said. “And I think we’ll probably lose more on this round too, because I know that Mexico is our biggest importer of corn. But this time, they may figure out that they can get corn from South America just as easily as from the U.S.”

….

All told, the first Trump administration spent $28 billion bailing out farmers. This time around, the tariffs are much higher than they were six years ago, and it’s unclear how long they will persist.

NPR asked the White House for details on what relief is under consideration this time, but received no response.

The payments were helpful, Pihl said. But they weren’t a fix for the longer-term damage done by Trump’s first-term tariffs.

“That was just for the one year. What about the market loss that continued through his term and into Biden’s term? I think the amount is incredible,” he said.

See Danielle Kurtzleben, China put steep tariffs on U.S. exports. Farmers are worried, NPR, April 12, 2025.

But it’s all fake news, right? These consequences for can’t be true, can they? Mr. Trump has a plan, of course he does. (He had a plan before each of his six business bankruptcies, didn’t he?)

Come for the culture war, stay for the inflationary trade war.

Elephants huddle in ‘alert circle’ to protect young during California earthquake: