Letter of the Week: Trump’s immigration and tariff decisions will impact all Iowans
“I have been reading with interest over the past several days about the federal revocation of about 200 worker visas for immigrants working at the meat packing plant in Ottumwa. The immigrants, from Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, have been told to leave the United States immediately. The meat packing plant affected is JBS, which is part of one of the largest meat processing companies in North America. This action is being undertaken at the direction of the Trump administration.
Two hundred packing house employees is about 10 percent of JBS employment in Ottumwa. Because immigrant labor is more highly represented at the bottom of the labor hierarchy in U.S. packing houses, we can expect them to be very heavily concentrated on the kill floor as slaughterers and cutters. Cutting slaughter capacity cuts both the overall supply of pork to consumers and the price farmers receive for hogs.
JBS Ottumwa kills over 20,000 hogs per day. By terminating kill floor workers through deportation, the Trump administration is likely cutting that by over 10 percent. That is 2,000 hogs a day. 14,000 hogs a week. 60,000 hogs a month. 720,000 hogs a year. Lost production because the Trump administration is deporting 200 immigrants who are in the United States legally. It is revoking their visas.
It is unlikely that these workers will be easily replaced. The Labor Market Information System also reports there are only 529 unemployed workers in Ottumwa. The great majority of these are likely on temporary layoff from John Deere’s Ottumwa Works. John Deere put 500 workers on temporary layoff earlier this year due to soft demand for ag machinery. That soft demand is due to soft international demand for Iowa’s ag products. That soft demand for Iowa’s ag products is due to the Trump administration’s chaotic trade war.
If you are an Iowa farmer producing pork, this means you will have a harder time selling your hogs into the meat processing market. It means you will spend more on transportation to access more distant processing facilities. It will lower your family’s income.
If you are a consumer of meat products, this means you will have substantially less pork in your grocer’s meat case. The pork that is there will be more expensive. The higher expense will increase demand for beef and poultry at the grocery store. This will drive up those prices, too.
The consumer price problem is not just for Iowa. Iowa is the leading pork producer in the nation. JBS is the second largest pork processor in the nation. By terminating 200 meat packing workers in Iowa, the Trump administration will drive up meat prices nationwide. This will be magnified further as the Trump administration targets immigrants at other JBS facilities and the meat packing industry nationwide.
If you live in the Ottumwa area, you can expect to see your property values go down. This will reduce property tax revenue, which will show up in poorer roads, schools, and public services. It will reduce the number of families patronizing local retail establishments and restaurants. That will reduce the incomes of another 3,000 Ottumwans employed in 180 local businesses. These reductions will reduce income and sales taxes at the state and local levels, further impacting services and public safety.
Inconvenience! Lower incomes! Higher prices! Are these the things a plurality of Americans voted for in 2024?
As I think about all of this, I remember that a short five years ago, as the COVID pandemic was shutting down businesses across the nation, the Trump administration, with support of Republican governors like Iowa’s own Kim Reynolds, implemented the Defense Production Act to force these same immigrant meat packing workers to stay on the job. They were classified as essential workers. They could not stay home and social distance like rich white Americans. They had to remain engaged in an industry with such high infection rates that our same Iowa Governor Reynolds ordered the Department of Public Health to withhold the industry’s COVID infection statistics from the public.
At the time, I did some quick calculations and estimated that an immigrant worker’s risk of COVID mortality in an Iowa meat packing house was quite likely higher than mortality rates among draftees during the Vietnam War. I have long since pulled that document from my website, but you can find the text of it here.
I am appalled that the plurality of my fellow citizens voted for this. As a candidate, Trump was clear that he would come after immigrants, women, and the poor. During his previous stint as president, he made it clear that he meant what he said.
I am appalled that so many of my fellow citizens can cavalierly support denying these immigrants their livelihoods now after forcing them to put their lives at risk to support our own welfare a mere five years ago.“
— Mark Imerman
