How federal cost-cutting savages retailers and farmers - Fisher, WaPo
Since 2009, Scott and Becky Harris have made rye whiskey and other craft spirits at their distillery in Purcellville, Va., 50 miles northwest of the White House. They are not federal employees. They are not federal contractors. But in just one month in office, President Donald Trump has undermined their business.
The president’s announcement on Feb. 1 that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on all goods coming into the United States from Canada or Mexico so scared the Harrises’ importers in those countries that they’ve edged away from selling the couple’s Catoctin Creek ryes — even though Trump at least temporarily backed off his tariff threats when the markets reacted poorly to the tactic.
This is not the Harrises’ first shock from Trump’s cavalier attitude toward American businesses. Before his first term, they had spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars cultivating a European market for their liquor. When Trump slapped tariffs on our European allies, they quickly retaliated with tariffs on American whiskey. The price of a bottle of Catoctin Creek in, say, Germany leaped from 50 euros ($52) to 75 euros ($79). So Scott and Becky pivoted, spending the past few years getting their stuff onto shelves in Canada and Mexico. They even got digital marketing assistance from Virginia’s economic development agency, which used state and federal funds to help them start selling to our neighboring countries.
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In the past couple of weeks, Scott’s distributor in France told him that “with all this Trump stuff, we’re just not going to do business in America now.” In Canada, U.S. spirits are being swept off shelves as consumers rebel against buying American. And in Mexico, Scott said, “I’ve spent the past couple of years investing in sales and brand training, making deals with importers, and now I’m getting a sense of cold feet from them.”
Who could have imagined that when you act aggressively against your closest allies, many people beyond the employ of the federal government might suffer? The Harrises and many other Americans whose businesses we taxpayers indirectly invested in are suffering as their markets dry up and their customers get miffed. Same goes for federal workers: When you sack thousands of feds for no reason, all sorts of self-employed Americans get hurt. Contrary to what the Trump-Musk alternative news machinery would have you believe, the public and private sectors are not separate worlds. They are, rather, vitally connected parts of one larger engine.
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It’s dawning on Republicans in Congress that maybe some of the cuts need to be reversed to help biomedical research, or to build school buses or to help businesses grow. Yeah, just maybe.
https://archive.ph/kIEeO
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