Americans have overwhelmingly declared Donald Trump as the 2024 GOP presidential nominee. He won the Iowa caucuses by a record-setting 30-point margin over the entire GOP primary field and won by double digits in New Hampshire the following week.
History has shown that Iowa is a bellwether for how rural America, and especially farm country, will vote in the general election. The results in Iowa sent a clear message: Our farmers and ranchers want a leader in the White House who has a proven track record of fighting to protect rural America.
There’s only one person on the ballot who can save us from radical policies hurting American agriculture: Donald J. Trump.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a leader in the White House who understands the importance of reliable trade deals and partnerships. American producers export 25 percent of what they grow across the globe annually and rely on consistent trade deals to account for a large part of their yearly income.
While in office, President Trump prioritized securing trade partnerships for American-made goods, delivering one of the greatest trade deals in history: the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada Agreement (USMCA). Launched on July 1, 2020, the USMCA has allowed Mexico to unseat China as our largest trade partner and is on track to do nearly $1 trillion in trade annually. Providing farmers and ranchers with a long-lasting and consistent trade deal as opposed to the ups and downs of China trade.
In contrast, President Biden has not secured a single new trade partnership while in office.
We need a leader in the White House who does not run from hard conversations. President Trump was not afraid to have tough negotiations with adversarial nations like China, where he successfully navigated a trade war that paid off for rural America and took our ag exports to record heights.
The bottom line is that the Trump administration delivered deals that have resulted in continued success. In 2022, the United States reached a record of nearly $200 billion worth of agriculture exports. While Biden will try to take a victory lap for these profitable relationships, our farmers know that these dividends are a result of Trump-led trade agreements. Joe Biden is simply trying to ride Trump’s coattails and gaslight farmers by taking credit for deals that he was never a part of.
Where Trump triumphed for our farmers and ranchers, Biden has failed to deliver.
Rural America has not forgotten that Joe Biden walked away from continuing negotiations on the historic Trump-China trade deal. Joe Biden also recently walked away from a trade agreement with the United Kingdom, the pursuit of which started under the Trump administration. Simply put, Joe Biden has essentially declared a moratorium on all trade agreements and walked away from deals that have proven to be successful. His vacuum of leadership is now resulting in weakening commodity prices and record agricultural trade deficits.
Under Joe Biden, his trade failures have been compounded by the highest inflation rates in over 40 years and record-high interest rates that have crippled our family farms. Biden’s failed energy and foreign policies have also resulted in skyrocketing fertilizer and fuel prices over the last three years — in some cases tripling or doubling in cost. His failed economic policies have hurt everyone from farm to fork. On the contrary, Trump met his successful trade negotiations with America First policies that gave us record-low interest rates and a booming economy.
Another poke in the eye of hard-working Americans across rural America is Biden’s top-down approach to regulations, which not only dictate how farmers tend to their land and livestock but also drive up the cost of production. On day one, Biden reinstated the disastrous Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, an Obama-era regulation that brought the federal government into almost every pasture and puddle across the country. Trump had successfully repealed and replaced it. President Trump ensured his agencies were customer-oriented and focused on public service, aiming to reduce the red tape hindering our farmers.
On the energy front, President Trump was committed to increasing biofuel volumes and allowing year-round E15 to lower the cost of American-made clean energy. Joe Biden will barely even utter the words biofuels despite multiple campaign promises to expand its usage. Biden should support biofuels because they dramatically reduce tailpipe emissions on cars and help keep fuel costs low. Instead, Biden is relentless in his costly multi-billion-dollar pursuit of mandating electric vehicle usage.
Despite the challenges brought on our family farms under the Biden administration, our farmers and ranchers are resilient, but right now, they fear their way of life is under attack. President Biden has proven he will stand with his radical progressives and elitists over hard-working American farmers. Across the heartland, people know that Biden has never lost sleep over the impacts of his decisions on rural America, which is why there is no dispute that Trump is the president for rural America.
President Trump delivered a robust farm bill, unleashed American energy independence and negotiated effectively for our producers through trade partnerships. In contrast, President Biden has not even written a farm bill that was due last year, offshored energy production, increased fuel prices, imposed relentless regulations and created some of the worst economic conditions that farmers haven’t seen in decades, including historic inflation and trade deficits. Trump’s policies fostered a humming economy, while Biden’s approach has led to higher costs to do business and greater scrutiny by the federal government.
As agriculture goes, so goes rural America. While Joe Biden’s policies decimate rural America, Donald Trump has a proven record of fighting for our ag producers. That is why, when determining who stands behind farm country, the answer couldn’t be clearer.
Joe Biden’s recent claims, propped up by the mainstream media, that he has worked hard for rural America are hollow and only point to long-term successes that Trump actually fought for. Like Iowans, farmers, and ranchers across the heartland know, in the 2024 presidential race, there’s only one candidate with a proven record of delivering for rural America, and that’s Donald Trump.
Roger Marshall, M.D., is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.