“It hurts, I can’t deny it.” John Fleming, a fifth generation farmer born in Halifax County in the heart of North Carolina, anxiously observed the numbers on the screen of his computer: cotton prices, soybeans and corn met. On Monday, April 7, market lunch again, five days after the “Liberation Day” of Donald Trump with the announcement of mass tariffs. The 44 -year -old farmer, with his red beard and coffee thermos in his hand, will not plant cotton this year: the price of $ 0.649 per pound is below the equilibrium point. Now awaits the repercussions of the new rates: “I hope it is a short -term pain, for a long -term gain.” The desire has been ecological by Maga (Make America Great Again) Republican Lishmakers and Editorists of Ultraconservative Fox News in recent days: “It will be worth pain.”
In North Carolina, a swing state that Trump won in 185,000 votes in November 2024 and the fifth largest American exhibition to China, anxiety mixed with hope among farmers. The soybeans, corn, wheat, peanuts, tobacco and cotton cover a quarter of this eastern territory, interspersed with forests, baptist churches and Victorian -style houses. Almost 80% of agricultural counties in the United States voted for Trump, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Fleming hesitated to reveal that he voted for the magician champion, fearing that activists could set fire to his tractor as well as damage the Tesla cars, the company owned by Trump Elon Musk’s advisor.
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