Thread by @sdonnan

Great story by my Bloomberg colleagues ⁦@MarioDParker⁩ and ⁦@MikeDorning⁩ on farmers and the trade wars. Which brings up a few thoughts... 1/
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

We sometimes frame the political impact of the trade wars as an all or nothing narrative. The farmers are still with Trump! White blue collar men still support the president! 2/

The reality, however, is that things are so tight politically in many parts of the country that the result in 2020 could be the result of swings of 1-2% in the vote. 3/

Take Pennsylvania... In 2016 Trump won the state by 43k votes. That was roughly 0.7% of the vote.

A swing of 1% to the Democratic challenger would mean Trump losing the state.

So the issue is not whether the bulk of farmers in Pennsylvania support Trump and his trade wars. 4/

The issue is whether the trade pars will cause even a small erosion in support for Trump in tightly-contested states. As I reported here: PA lost more than 8k manufacturing jobs in the first 7 months of this year. 5/

bloomberg.com/news/features/…

As my colleague @JoeDeaux reports there is a “trade boomerang” hitting US steel makers. That may mean some of the few thousand workers who gained jobs as a result of steel tariffs will lose them again... 6/6

newsmax.com/t/finance/arti…