For years, Mackeys Ferry Sawmill in North Carolina depended on overseas buyers in China and Vietnam after domestic demand for premium hardwood declined. But when President Donald Trump launched his escalating trade war, the mill’s owners say the damage was immediate and ultimately irreversible. By July—just months after Trump declared his “Liberation Day” tariffs—they made the decision to shut the operation down entirely.
In a recent episode of the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg economics correspondent Shawn Donnan traveled to the “Old North State” to trace how one of America’s oldest trades was shaken by Trump’s tariff battles, and to hear how the mill’s owners now feel about the president they once supported at the ballot box.
Welfare. Only of a better class than poor folk. They are and have been getting welfare my whole life. When I was in high school this farmers son got new truck every spring. By spring of the next year it would be trashed. Every year they would get their welfare checks from the US government and every year they would get new vehicles to trash. This went on for decades.