Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump is famous for not thinking ahead and that failing may come back to bite him in the rear soon. Sometimes things he wants have consequences he does not want or think about until they occur and it is too late to prevent them.
One of his top priorities is tariffs. He had said he wants a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. Turns out that Canada has a lot of oil and the U.S. imports some of it. That oil won't be easy to replace in the short term. The tariff will increase gas prices by about 40¢/gallon. And guess who that will affect the most: (1) someone living in rural Wyoming, or (2) someone who lives in New York City and doesn't have a car? In addition to raising gas prices for consumers, it will also raise the price of fuel for trucks, and all the products they deliver, increasing inflation for many products. Increasing inflation was not one of Trump's campaign promises, but it is one of the things Democrats can run on in 2026: He sent prices skyrocketing.
Another pet project of his is deporting undocumented immigrants. How will he find them? The easiest way is to find places where there are high concentrations of them. The go-to place is in the meatpacking industry. Work in slaughterhouses is horrible, with blood, carcasses, and the screams of animals that see what is going on everywhere. Working at McDonalds or Walmart is heaven compared to this, so few Americans aspire to a job slaughtering cows or pigs. More than any other industry, these jobs are filled by undocumented immigrants who are willing to work for a subminimum wage and won't file complaints about it. Deporting these people will be straightforward. The problem comes later when the slaughterhouses have to greatly increase the wages of their workers to beat McDonalds and Walmart in order to attract legal workers. This is going to make the cost of meat skyrocket. You don't think people will notice? Democrats will make sure they do.
And Trump will make it worse by insisting that the first few raids on slaughterhouses be recorded so he can brag about how he is deporting undocumented people. This will have the effect of causing undocumented immigrants in other slaughterhouses to look for other work, to avoid deportation. And there are even more effects. There are animal parts that Americans won't eat but which people in other countries will. About one-third of the value of a hog is in the exported animal parts. Higher wages in slaughterhouses and retaliatory tariffs will hit hog farmers right in the pork belly.
Many of Trump's other policies will impact his supporters much more than they will impact Democrats. Trump wants to slash Medicaid, thinking the main users are Black Democrats in cities. Wrong. There are more people in rural areas on Medicaid than in cities. About one-third of rural hospitals are now under financial stress. If he cuts reimbursement rates for Medicaid, some rural hospitals will become insolvent and close. Imagine what will happen if a farmer has a serious accident with farm machinery and the nearest hospital is 100 miles away in a different state. Nearly half of all children in rural areas get health care through Bill Clinton's Children's Health Insurance Program, which Trump wants to cut.
Trump's plan to offer "school choice" (in order to combat "wokeness") could destabilize schools in small towns more than it will in cities. Many of them are already facing financial strain from declining enrollments. People there actually understand that the public schools are a crucial pillar of their communities. They demonstrated this by voting down voucher plans in Nebraska and Kentucky on Nov. 5. If Trump plows ahead with his voucher plan, it will be rural areas that suffer the most.
Now back to tariffs again. The U.S. agricultural system is very efficient, so American farmers can produce food cheaper than farmers in many other countries. When China gets hit with tariffs, China will hit back where it hurts Trump the most, by raising tariffs on, or even banning the import of, soybeans and other U.S. agricultural products. That will hit farmers, who largely support Trump, hard. In Trump v1.0, we got a preview of this and Trump had to ask Congress for $28 billion in free money to give to farmers to compensate for the loss of sales. With a smaller margin in the House this time, the deficit caucus may balk at giving away free money. And that may not be a one-off problem. China and other countries may permanently change their buying patterns to buy more food from Brazil and Australia going forward, permanently reducing the size of the export market. Farmers won't like this. At least one study shows that by 2028, farmers may lose half of their export income.
All of these things will put these supporters in a bind. They will love his attacking minorities and transgender people, but will lament their income dropping, their health systems collapsing, their schools hanging on by a thread, and in general, life getting tough. This could give Democrats an opening in 2026 by talking about reversing their economic decline. Some Trump voters might even grudgingly accept gender-affirming surgery in California if the alternative is living in poverty with no schools or health care and watching their little town die. (V)