TSITRIAN: Trump No Friend of Family Farmers
by John Tsitrian (Rapid City Journal) … And forgetting about soybeans for a minute, there’s the matter of Trump administration policy on the ethanol mandate, aka the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a major matter for corn producers. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has been “chipping away” at RFS, which has irked Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, who bluntly told Pruitt last week that if the EPA chief didn’t reverse course, he, Grassley, would “be calling for Pruitt to resign.” Trump’s front man at EPA has been a dud, and Grassley has been rightly outraged.
So now we’ve got farmers facing major new national debt, rising interest rates, price-crippling trade disputes and an ethanol-resistant EPA. If all this makes Trump the “effective chief executive” that (GOP Congressional hopeful Dusty) Johnson venerates, Dusty can have him. READ MORE