That’s Wisconsin cranberry grower and co-op president Linda Prehn, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal in a story about how retaliatory tariffs from the European Union, Canada, China and Mexico have crushed demand, and thus pricing power, for the bitter berry that’s grown almost exclusively in North America.
About a third of U.S. cranberry production is exported, and according to a Massachusetts trade-group executive quoted in the Journal story, the countries putting up cranberry barriers in response to Trump administration targeting of goods imported to the U.S. from those countries, are the very markets that had been targeted by the industry for “major growth.”
Wisconsin grower Prehn, according to the Journal, called it “ironic” that cranberry growers in her state, in her estimation largely supportive of Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency, should see their business “tank” because of administration policy. If cranberries, owing to retaliatory tariffs, become exorbitantly costly for overseas markets, according to Prehn, “they start using raisins or prunes or something that’s cheaper [and] that’s grown somewhere else.”
From the MarketWatch archives (April 5, 2016): Wisconsin primary may not be Trump’s Waterloo, but the state is worth watching
Also in Key Words: Economic adviser Kudlow, asked about negative effects of Trump tariffs on U.S. business: ‘Don’t class warfare me’
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