The EU-Mercosur trade agreement is a rare and shining example of commerce breaking through the barriers erected by petty protectionists and their eternal fear of competition. At its core, it is a hymn to the free market, a declaration that tariffs, quotas, and subsidies—the sacred tools of economic mediocrity—are not the natural order of things. And yet, the usual chorus of obstructionists gathers to denounce it, their arguments cloaked in the lofty robes of “national interest” or “environmental concern”.

Yet some libertarians chime in into that very choir. Claudia Nunes, the leader of Portuguese Ladies for Liberty Alliance called The EU-Mercosur Agreement “the illusion of the free market” and writes that “The Mercosur countries must meet the same criteria as European farmers”. Similar voices can be heard in Poland from the masquerading as libertarian Konfederacja party. Apparently some libertarians think we should cease free trade whenever EU markets are more regulated than the foreign ones, so at the current regulatory state for all industries under the sun. Or maybe we should make the exception for farmers out of the kindness of our hearts.

Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children Farmers

But here steps in HL Mencken, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his economic ignorance and obedience to the dogma of protecting the farmers at all costs. He observes that, already back in 1924, the farmer had become a “sacred cow” in Western society. Economic principles were readily discarded, and elaborate protectionist measures were implemented to cater to their interests.

“Let the farmer, so far as I am concerned, be damned forevermore. To Hell with him, and bad luck to him. He is a tedious fraud and ignoramus, a cheap rogue and hypocrite, the eternal Jack of the human pack. He deserves all that he ever suffers under our economic system, and more. Any city man, not insane, who sheds tears for him is shedding tears of the crocodile.

“No more grasping, selfish and dishonest mammal, indeed, is known to students of the Anthropoidea. When the going is good for him he robs the rest of us up to the extreme limit of our endurance; when the going is bad he comes bawling for help out of the public till. Has anyone ever heard of a farmer making any sacrifice of his own interest, however slight, to the common good? Has anyone ever heard of a farmer practising or advocating any political idea that was not absolutely self-seeking—that was not, in fact, deliberately designed to loot the rest of us to his gain? Greenbackism, free silver, the government guarantee of prices, bonuses, all the complex fiscal imbecilities of the cow State John Baptists—these are the contributions of the virtuous husbandmen to American political theory. There has never been a time, in good seasons or bad, when his hands were not itching for more; there has never been a time when he was not ready to support any charlatan, however grotesque, who promised to get it for him. Only one issue ever fetches him, and that is the issue of his own profit. He must be promised something denite and valuable, to be paid to him alone, or he is off after some other mountebank. He simply cannot imagine himself as a citizen of a commonwealth, in duty bound to give as well as take; he can imagine himself only as getting all and giving nothing.

“Yet we are asked to venerate this prehensile moron as the Urburgher, the citizen par excellence, the foundation-stone of the state! And why? Because he produces something that all of us must have that we must get somehow on penalty of death. And how do we get it from him? By submitting helplessly to his unconscionable blackmailing—by paying him, not under any rule of reason, but in proportion to his roguery and incompetence, and hence to the direness of our need. I doubt that the human race, as a whole, would submit to that sort of high-jacking, year in and year out, from any other necessary class of men. But the farmers carry it on incessantly, without challenge or reprisal, and the only thing that keeps them from reducing us, at intervals, to actual famine is their own imbecile knavery. They are all willing and eager to pillage us by starving us, but they can’t do it because they can’t resist attempts to swindle each other.

“It is the theory of the zanies who perform at Washington that a grower of wheat devotes himself to that banal art in a philanthropic and patriotic spirit—that he plants and harvests his crop in order that the folks of the cities may not go without bread. It is the plain fact that he raises wheat because it takes less labor than any other crop—because it enables him, after working no more than sixty days a year, to loaf the rest of the twelve months. If wheat-raising could be taken out of the hands of such lazy fellahin and organized as the production of iron or cement is organized, the price might be reduced by two-thirds, and still leave a large profit for entrepreneurs. But what would become of the farmers? Well, what rational man gives a hoot? If wheat went to $10 a bushel tomorrow, and all the workmen of the cities became slaves in name as well as in fact, no farmer in this grand land of freedom would consent voluntarily to a reduction of as much as ⅛ of a cent a bushel. “The greatest wolves,” said E. W. Howe, a graduate of the farm, “are the farmers who bring produce to town to sell.” Wolves? Let us not insult Canis lupus. I move the substitution of Hyena hyena.”

Nothing has ever changed in the last 100 years.

I’m all for cutting government regulations—every last one if I had my way—but I’m also all for EU-Mercosur. Cutting off trade in industries where the EU’s overregulation outpaces the rest of the world (and that’s most of them) would be lunacy. And honestly, I can’t see why we should care more about farmers’ endless demands than the grocery bills that hit the poorest the hardest. Especially when we’re already subsidizing farmers endlessly, as if no amount is ever enough.

Through the alchemy of subsidies and regulations, the wizards of Brussels have conjured such wonders as “milk lakes” and “butter mountains,” vast reserves of surplus food produced not because anyone needed it but because farmers were paid to churn it out. To deal with this glut, the same wise heads invented schemes to store, dump, or outright destroy the excess, all at tremendous cost to the hapless taxpayer.

Yet, if you don’t give farmers more money, they will start rioting. This blackmail needs to cease.

However, there is an even more overarching reason to go full-throttle on the free trade.  EU-Mercosur is essential for Argentina. Given the stakes, it is clear as daylight that Milei’s economic success is not just important—it is essential. Every lever must be pulled, every obstacle bulldozed, even if it means upsetting a few overcoddled, oversubsidized farmers along the way. Argentina’s economy stands as the proving ground for libertarian thought, the grand experiment of our age, and failure here would echo like a funeral bell for the cause itself. A setback now wouldn’t just be a stumble; it could be a disaster of historic proportions, imperilling the very future we seek to build.

Let the farmer, so far as I am concerned, be damned forevermore indeed.