Donald Trump has been a disaster for rural America | Steven Greenhouse

Donald Trump’s policies have been a disaster for the nation’s farmers, so much so that a near electoral miracle may soon happen: Kansas, one of the deepest red, most rural states, may elect its first Democratic senator in nearly a century.

After Trump won farm country handily in 2024, many rural voters in Kansas, Iowa and elsewhere have soured on him because the price of diesel fuel, a key input for farming, has soared by nearly 70%, farm bankruptcies have surged and because Trump’s trade wars have significantly reduced agricultural exports.

Rural voters are so upset with Trump that polls show that Republican Senate candidates stand a good chance of losing in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, even though Trump won those rural states by 13 percentage points or more in 2024. No wonder Trump is hopscotching madly across Kansas, Iowa, and other states in the midterm campaign’s final weeks.

No one is saying that Trump deliberately hurt farmers, but when he plunged the US into the Iran war and his many trade wars, he showed little concern about what those decisions might mean for rural America. It was nearly inevitable that Trump’s moves would batter farmers – by pushing down soybean and other farm exports and by pushing up the price of fuel, fertilizer and farm equipment. Not only that, Trump’s proudest legislative achievement, his “big, beautiful bill”, further hammered farm country with its major cuts to food assistance and its $1tn in Medicaid cuts, which will cause an estimated 1.8 million rural Americans to lose health insurance.

“He has sold out rural America with his policies,” said Jon Tester, a third-generation Montana farmer and former US senator.

Even the Cato Institute, a Republican-friendly, conservative thinktank, slammed Trump over what he has done to farmers. A Cato commentary stated that while Trump calls this a “golden age” for farmers, the fact is that Trump’s “tariffs are inflicting serious damage” on farmers, increasing their input prices and causing their exports to decline by billions of dollars.

This helps explain why farm bankruptcies have jumped by 85% over two years ago.

Little wonder that a recent KFF/AP poll found that roughly six in 10 rural voters disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy, while around half believe the economy is in worse shape than when Trump returned to office.

Indeed, many rural voters have turned against Trump – while nearly two-thirds backed him in 2024, now less than half, 49%, of rural voters say they support GOP candidates this fall, according to a Fox News poll.

At a recent news conference in Washington, John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, sought to convey the pain and anger many farmers feel. “Because of the misuse of tariffs, record high agricultural input costs, soaring fertilizer costs”, and “high interest rates”, Hansen said, farmers “are facing the worst economic and financial crisis since the farm crisis of the 1980s”, when many farms went under because of sky-high interest rates.

In a direct slap at Trump, Hansen added: “Just when farmers need to expand markets for their products, the president seems to be at war with our nation’s top three trading partners: Mexico, Canada and China. When trade wars break out, farmer noses always bleed first and worst and longest.”

Many rural voters backed Trump in 2024 because he promised to cut prices, including energy prices, and vowed not to plunge the US into unnecessary, expensive wars overseas. But now many feel betrayed because Trump began an unnecessary, expensive war against Iran that caused diesel fuel – which farmers rely on for their tractors and combines – to soar to a record $6.52 a gallon in late September, before declining somewhat (to $6.32). This price spike – diesel averaged $3.75 a gallon before the war – cost most farmers thousands of extra dollars when many were barely breaking even.

“Compared to last year, our fuel bill is $50,000 higher,” Vance Ehmke, a Kansas farmer, told the Hastings (Nebraska) Tribune, while “fertilizer, that’s going to be at least another $20,000 or $40,000 increase. That’s all due to Trump and his war in Iran. We are madder than hell about it.

“I want to tell you that I am a Republican, and I’m pissed.”

Last month, the American Farm Bureau Federation ran a bad news article saying “the record-high input cost environment”, meaning high diesel and fertilizer prices, means that “no major row crop”, such as soybeans or corn, “is projected to clear break-even” this year”.

In Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and other farm states, ranchers are fuming that Trump announced plans to import roughly 660m lb of tariff-free beef with the aim of cutting beef prices by 25% – one of the many ways Trump’s tariffs angered consumers was by pushing up beef prices. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association voiced dismay about Trump’s beef imports, saying the move would undercut the struggling industry’s stability.

The North Carolina farmer Matt Bell had a warning for Republicans. Bell, who voted for Trump in 2024, told CBS News: “Everything we touch has gone up. We’re in a position now where we’re mad and ready to be heard.”

With rural America in deep pain, Bell and many other farmers who traditionally backed Republicans want to send a message to the party that controls the White House, Senate and House. Many are angry that GOP lawmakers haven’t sought to protect farmers by fighting against Trump’s tariffs and war against Iran.

“We need to get some other voices in there to push back a little bit on this stuff,” Nancy Danner, a soybean and corn farmer in Iowa, told the Wall Street Journal. “We need as many changes as we can get.” Danner said she plans to vote only for Democrats in November.

A Wall Street Journal headline had bleak news for the GOP, saying: “Republicans are facing the worst political environment in farm country in decades.”

All this dismay could go far to elect Democratic Senate candidates in rural states: Josh Turek in Iowa, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, Roy Cooper in North Carolina and James Talarico in Texas, not to mention the independent progressive Dan Osborn in Nebraska.

John Tsitrian, a South Dakota business executive who writes about rural America, didn’t mince words about who’s to blame.

“Farmers are hurting thanks to Trump’s apocalyptic screw-up,” he wrote. Perhaps the biggest screw-up, in Tsitrian’s view, has been the loss of global markets caused by Trump’s never-ending trade wars, which he said have caused long-lasting “structural damage” to US farmers.

Before Trump’s first term, the US and Brazil each provided about 40% of China’s soybean imports. But as a result of Trump’s repeated trade wars with China and China’s search for more reliable, less antagonistic trading partners, the US now provides just 23% of China’s soybeans, with Brazil providing over 60% and Argentina 10%. With China importing around $60bn worth of soybeans annually, that means a painful loss of $10bn a year in US soybean exports.

Trump has long been known to seek to shovel money, often lots of money, to people who are angry at him. Just look at his shameless plan to hand out $5,000 to every American adult.

Seeing how upset farmers are about sky-high diesel prices, Trump announced a new handout on Monday at a rally in Kansas – he promised $8bn in emergency aid to US farmers in what he called the Harvest Fuel Relief Program. It seemed like a desperate, last-ditch effort to rescue Kansas’s incumbent Republican senator, Roger Marshall. That came after Trump announced a previous $12bn bailout of farmers last December.

While acknowledging that farmers need emergency aid, South Dakota’s Tsitrian wrote, “Today’s tough farm economy, in regular need of federal cash infusions, is the result of a disaster that has a specific name attached to it: Donald Trump. Unlike most disasters, this one was utterly foreseeable.”

Across rural America, there is fast-increasing frustration, dismay and anger about economic conditions, Trump’s policies and GOP lawmakers whom farmers have long supported.

“This Republican-led Congress has not done their job,” said Hansen, the Farm Union president. “They have not helped our nation’s farmers in our time of need, and it is time for a change.”

• Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues