Thanks to Trump’s immigration and tariff policies, the outlook for agriculture is cloudy.
Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark:
DONALD TRUMP’S PUSH FOR MASS DEPORTATIONS was always reliant on a degree of shock and awe. Fear and intimidation were both means and ends. But recently, the administration has had to slow down or even abandon individual deportations in the face of strong popular resistance. And now the president is signaling another huge exception to his deportation policy. “We’re also going to work with farmers,” Trump said Thursday. “If they have strong recommendations for their farms for certain people, we’re going to let them stay in for a while. . . . We have to take care of our farmers and our hotels and various places where they need the people.” Trump’s off-the-cuff comments aren’t necessarily government policy, but they often signal future policy directions. In this case, it sounds like Trump is getting ready to carve out exemptions from his deportation regime for agricultural workers. After all, Trump is right—bear with me—that farms have a special need for immigrant labor. In February, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) met with California Citrus Mutual, a trade association that represents the growers who provide 90 percent of the country’s lemons, grapefruits, and oranges. Already, just days into Trump’s second term, the association was concerned about the impact Trump’s then-hypothetical tariffs could have on the Central Valley, and the group’s president and CEO, Casey Creamer, had warned that immigration raids threatened the food supply. The problem antedated the Trump administration: After major raids in early January by Customs and Border Protection in Kern County, “one citrus operation reported that 25% of its workers did not show up,” according to Creamer. “By the following day, that number had climbed to 75%.” Locals and labor groups interpret those pre-inauguration raids as the agency trying to impress the incoming president. Trump’s combination of tariffs and deportations has rattled farmers and growers in California, who provide more than a third of the nation’s vegetables and more than three quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts. “Farmers in California and across the country are being hit with a trifecta of damaging Republican policies: chaotic tariffs, haphazard mass deportations, and massive cuts to federal programs they rely on,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told The Bulwark. “These reckless actions are leaving farmers in a dangerous limbo, unable to plan for the future and without the workforce that fuels their industry.” (For his part, Schiff has pointed out that while Trump made an effort to compensate farmers who were hurt during the first round of tariffs four years ago, “the compensation was not evenly distributed, and specialty crop farmers in California got very little compared to farmers elsewhere. So I don’t think anyone should expect to be made whole if we go through another round of that.”)
Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), whose father in the 1950s was part of the Bracero program that brought temporary farm laborers from Mexico to the United States, recently held a town hall in the agriculture hub of Bakersfield to hear voters’ concerns. He said Republicans like Rep. David Valadao, who represents the district, are AWOL.
[...]
Be Our Guest (Worker)
DESPERATE FOR A STABLE WORKFORCE, California farm groups have come out in support of more H-2A guest worker visas. Labor groups—who represent the people currently doing the work, not those who could theoretically do the work—are less keen on the idea of replacing hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm hands with seasonal workers.
Despite Trump’s crass and cruel anti-immigration and economic-damaging tariffs, farmers across America are finding ways to keep food on the table.
