Consider, for a moment, the humble soybean. Glycine Max, as Linnaeus would call it, even though that sounds like the guy who eloped with the Beatles’ Polythene Pam. I learned about it in fourth grade geography, from Sister Mary Theodore, SSJ, who told us that from soybeans we get many things, including plastic.

Until then, my encounters with beans were limited to the wax, string, green, and lima varieties, although I devised a successful strategy to avoid encountering lima beans, including feeding them surreptitiously to our beagle, because I believed—and do believe to this day—that they taste like sand.

But plastics? From a bean? What a wondrous age in which we lived.

At the moment, the humble soybean is playing the role of Belgium—or, perhaps, Poland—in the germinating trade war between China and the United States, which began because the current president* of the United States, who doesn’t know anything about anything, decided to thump his chest about tariffs. Now China is talking about a 25 percent tariff on American agricultural goods, including our $14 billion soybean trade with them.

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Because, unlike our president*, the people in charge of China know something about something, they’ve aimed their threats at the agricultural midwest, which went heavily for the president* in the last election. (In ancient China, soybeans were considered one of five plants sacred to the gods, and you can look that up.) From CNBC:

"They are hitting soybeans, wheat, corn and cotton — so all the agricultural products — and this is in addition to what they announced already on pork and sorghum," said Wendong Zhang, assistant professor of economics at Iowa State University. "So essentially if this becomes a reality two months later, this will be a disastrous situation for U.S. agriculture." China's planned tariffs on U.S. agriculture come as the nation's heartland already is struggling after years of low crop prices. Some farmers are considering exiting the business. In February, the USDA predicted net farm income in 2018 would fall to lowest level in nominal terms since 2006. The lion's share of the U.S. agribusiness trade to China involves soybeans, which are grown in many Midwestern farm states where President Donald Trump received strong support during the 2016 presidential election.

There’s already some backing and filling from Camp Runamuck; they sent out Larry Kudlow, the White House chief economic adviser who also is something of a clown, to soft-pedal the president*’s threats.

Nevertheless, this is Plaintiff’s Exhibit No. ZZZ as to why voting for a vulgar talking yam because he makes you feel good about hating all the right people is a very stupid way of deciding who should be president. I wish the folks in Iowa and Nebraska and the Dakotas all the best but, Jesus, people, vote your glycine next time. We’ll all be better off.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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