Today, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, DNC Chair Tom Perez, Wisconsin farmer Craig Myhre, and Pennsylvania farmer Rick Telesz discussed the devastating impact of Trump’s reckless trade policies on American workers and farmers. The press call followed the launch of a new television and digital ad entitled “Played,” which highlights how Trump lost his foolish trade war against China and betrayed American workers and farmers who are now struggling to stay afloat.

“You know in my part of the country, we have a lot of manufacturing, we have a lot of farming, and we have a lot of families wondering what it’s going to take for them to get ahead, to get on their feet at a time when so much has been thrown at us, largely because of bad policy coming out of Washington with this administration,” said Mayor Pete Buttigieg. “[Trump] was rolled by China, fooled by Xi Jinping, and duped into making them strategically better off. … The deal that he got is so much worse than where we started out before the reckless trade war. At the end of the day, he sold out American workers, he sold out American farmers, and he sold out American values.”

“Trump’s reckless trade war with China has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and has decimated family farms,” said DNC Chair Tom Perez. “Donald Trump said he’d get tough on China, but he didn’t. He clamored for a trade war with China and said that it would be easy to win, but he lost. … His go-at-it-alone tariffs inflicted pain on American workers, not China. Instead of forcing China to the table to negotiate a trade deal that protected us, China sensed Trump’s desperation and played him like a fiddle.”

“Prices have been on a precipitous fall here for the last three years, when Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs. And once the coronavirus hit, that just put more salt in the wound. The tariff has driven China away from our markets. … I really fear that this is going to be a market that we’ve lost and is never going to come back,” said Wisconsin farmer Craig Myhre. “I just can’t have another four years of terrible trade policy and more tariffs. … We just cannot continue down this road and expect family farms like me to survive.”

“I’m a third generation on this family farm — it was bought in 1949 by my grandfather. And there have been some challenging times in those decades, generations, but nothing has been any tougher than the last three years under this administration,” said Pennsylvania farmer Rick Telesz. “As far as Trump’s promises to the American farmers, ‘go out and buy more land, more equipment,’ this guy has no credibility. Everything he says, it’s almost like he’s in his own world. I have not heard him make one statement, as far as farming, that actually he lived up to. It’s a very trying time.”