'This is going to kill us': Trump-backing farmers reel at trade war and signal openness to voting Dem in 2020

Some farmers in South Dakota who backed President Donald Trump in 2016 say they're at the breaking point when it comes to suffering under the financial damage that's being caused by his trade wars.

The Washington Post reports that farmers in the tiny town of Orient, South Dakota are feeling more and more pessimistic about their financial situations as Trump's trade war with China drags on.

"We’re spinning our wheels," farmer Mark Cotton told the Post. "This trade thing is going to kill us."

Cotton's neighbor, a fellow farmer named Ray Martinmaas, tells the Post that he might even consider voting for a Democrat in 2020, presuming the party nominates a red-state moderate.

People are starting to say, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive this,'" he said, while explaining that he could see himself voting for Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock next year. "You know, we’re the ones taking the brunt of it in all these negotiations, so they need to be kind of helping us out right now."

Martinmaas says that his farm lost a whopping $700,000 last year thanks in large part to Trump's trade wars. He has not been able to buy new equipment and he has barrels full of soy beans that are not going to market thanks to China's retaliatory tariffs on American crops.

Jennifer Poindexter-Runge, a local veterinarian who also receives income from her family's farm, tells the Post that Trump's farm bailout package isn't going to come close to undoing the damage being done by his trade war.

"It's not going to save anybody," she said, and also described the bailout plan as "putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding artery."