Ryan Marquardt, the vice president of the Iowa Farmers Union, was working at an Iowa State Fair booth when the news broke that the U.S. would import hundreds of thousands of tons of below-market-priced beef from Argentina and Brazil.
“I’ve never seen farmers more pissed,” Marquardt said. “That was the maddest I’ve seen farmers in a long time.”
The decision was one of several actions by the Trump administration that experts and insiders say have dulled enthusiasm for Republicans among rural voters, who are already facing high input costs from the war in Iran and escalating trade wars with some of the country’s biggest buyers of American agriculture.
Republicans also control Congress, but have struggled to pass a long-awaited farm bill that farmers say is desperately needed.
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Republicans have relied on rural voters to form a solid piece of their base in recent elections, and some argue that the Democratic brand is too poor to rehabilitate in many areas. However, experts still see rural voter apathy as a major issue for Republicans. Even if it doesn’t chip away at a crucial voting bloc in some key statewide races this cycle, it could cost the party down the road in a post-Donald Trump future.
“A lot of people who are now being called ‘reliable Republican voters’ weren’t within living memory,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“It takes something big to change long-established voting patterns, but I think there’s a possibility that the Trump administration has done things that are big enough and bad enough from the standpoint of rural America to make some of the voters who shifted a decade ago reconsider their choice,” Galston said.
Trump’s decision in August to import beef was meant to lower prices, but it sent a shock through American ranchers, who are at their lowest herd counts in decades. Beef prices have risen to record highs, and many producers have begun the long process of rebuilding their herds to meet demand.
Trump also entered an increasingly escalating trade war in August with Canada, a major trading partner. Canada is one of the largest buyers of American agriculture, and experts expect the country to seek imports elsewhere if tariffs make American products too costly.
“Our economies are intertwined on purpose,” John Hansen, the president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said. “You cannot shoot either Canada or Mexico in the foot without your own foot bleeding.”
Trump’s approval rating fell by 22 percentage points among rural voters from July to August, before his administration announced its intention to import 300,000 pounds of beef and Canada responded with its own tariffs on American goods.
Galston believes that recent data shows a depressed Republican electorate in rural America, one that is still looking for the end of the war in Iran and relief from trade wars that have raised the costs of importing essential materials and made it more expensive to trade in foreign markets.
“He keeps on promising that things are going to get better abruptly,” Galston said. “The timing of the abrupt shift for the better keeps on getting pushed backward, but the shape of the promise remains the same. Eat your spinach today, and there’ll be ice cream tomorrow. I think people are no longer willing to believe that.”
Experts and insiders say that the president’s unpopular policies have put races in play in states that Trump carried by double digits in 2024. One Republican consultant who was granted anonymity to discuss campaign discussions pointed to Iowa, where Democrats have leads or remain close in polling across the Senate, governor’s and House races, despite Trump winning Iowa by 13 percentage points in 2024.
The Senate race remains close in Kansas as well, albeit with a Republican advantage, where Trump won by 16 percentage points in 2024. Democrats also lead in polls for the Ohio Senate race, where Trump won by 11 percentage points.
“Rural Americans are feeling the pinch just like everybody else is,” the Republican insider said. “Anytime you raise the cost of goods, that’s a bad thing, and so it’s going to have an impact on voter apathy or voter excitement.”
Trump’s decisions have sparked backlash among Republicans in both chambers of Congress.
“I’m extremely disappointed by this decision from the White House,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) said on X. “We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers. Flooding the market with foreign beef hurts our livestock industry and undermines the long-term solution: growing the U.S. cattle herd to meet demand.”
Other Republicans, including Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, as well as Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas, have all spoken out against importing new foreign beef, the new tariffs with Canada or both.
Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), a cattle rancher, spoke out against the White House’s showing interest in importing Argentinian beef a year ago, saying, “If you flood the market, that hurts beef producers badly.”
The Trump administration has tried to tamp down the backlash.
Trump announced an executive order that would give producers additional authority to process and sell their own product, in an attempt to challenge the hold the four largest meat processors have on the industry. Some industry insiders weren’t satisfied with the exchange.
“For us, it feels a little bit more like it’s a Band-Aid for a very different kind of wound,” said Jenna Stanton, a policy director for Western Skies Strategies.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has acknowledged the impact of importing beef on America’s ranchers, telling Fox News in an interview that she first heard the news while on her way to Iowa.
“In a way, that was a blessing, because that way I could work to explain the president’s thinking but also hear directly from the ranchers just how difficult that decision was,” Rollins said.
Rollins has had to balance Trump’s desire for lower food prices during an election year when affordability concerns have become a top issue for voters, with an agriculture sector in desperate need of a profit margin.
Rollins has said she believes the current prices for American-produced ground beef are reasonable, but prices still need to go down. On Thursday, she announced a plan for mandatory country-of-origin labeling in part to “protect the American rancher.”
Republicans in Congress are also struggling to use their majority to pass farm policy, most notably the first full five-year farm bill since 2018. The bill advanced from the Senate Agriculture Committee on a party-line vote Wednesday, but its fate on the floor remains uncertain amid a partisan divide over payment shifts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Congress hasn’t passed an updated farm bill since 2018 and has relied on extensions since then to keep essential farm programs running. Farmers are desperate for updated commodity reference prices, which haven’t been updated since inflation worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump also took to Truth Social to reaffirm his commitment to passing a farm bill, saying much-needed financial assistance would be on the way. “I want to totally reassure our Farmers and Ranchers, and our Rural Communities, that they will be extremely happy with the end result,” he said.
Weeks before Election Day, Republicans now have to pitch a mixed bag of policies to voters who increasingly view the Trump administration unfavorably. This unfavorability toward Trump may not benefit Democrats, experts say.
Nicholas Jacobs, a professor of American government at Colby College in Maine who has written a book on the voting habits of rural Americans, thinks Democrats have a unique opportunity to make inroads with communities of voters they’ve lost, but isn’t optimistic they will.
“They call the Democratic Party the big tent party,” Jacobs said. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s still room for rural people in that big tent.”
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