Burning down the farm

Krugman on what a consummate (and foreseeable) disaster Trump 2.0 has been for rural areas:

When I say that rural whites are very Trumpy, I mean very Trumpy. In 2024 Donald Trump narrowly won the popular vote, with only a 1.5 percentage point margin. But he won rural areas by 30 points.

Trump won rural areas by such a large margin because farmers were wildly optimistic about what he would do for them. The Purdue/CME Ag Economy Barometer, which is basically an index of farmers’ economic sentiment, surged with Trump’s victory…

…Today, the rural Trump bump is nowhere to be seen. In fact, white rural voters’ views about Trump’s economic policy have turned astonishingly negative. Normally, partisanship strongly colors economic perceptions. According to a recent Fox News poll, only 29% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 71% disapprove. Yet 60% of Republicans still approve.

Remarkably, however, rural white voters are no longer behaving like non-rural Republican voters. They are almost as negative on the economy as the population as a whole, with only 32% of rural whites approving of Trump’s handling of the economy, and 68% disapproving. Trump has made the rural economy so bad that reality has overridden Trump voters’ usual tendency to make excuses for him.

The unavoidable reality is that things are really very bad in rural America. Moreover, the devastation hitting the heartland is squarely a consequence of Trump’s actions and not, like the Biden inflation of 2021-22, a result of forces outside presidential control.

First, there is Trump’s trade war, which has raised the cost of living for all Americans. But farmers have been hit especially hard because they are highly dependent on imported inputs. The tariffs raised the prices of farm machinery, chemicals and fertilizer. The final straw was the loss of foreign markets to rival agricultural exporters such as Brazil — losses that began during the trade wars of Trump’s first term and have accelerated during his second term…

…In 2025 the damage to the American farm economy from Trumpian policies caused a 46% rise in farm bankruptcies. The carnage looks much worse this year: farmers are being hit with another double whammy from the effects of the Iran war.

Like Trump’s tariffs, the Iran war is hitting farmers both as consumers and as producers. Along with all Americans, they are facing an overall rise in the cost of living as a result of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Farmers are also suffering from a large increase in agricultural operating costs. For example, the crisis in the Strait has raised the price of diesel fuel, which runs most agricultural machinery, more than it has raised gasoline prices. In addition, there has been a sharp increase in the price of fertilizer because a significant share of the world’s supply comes from the Persian Gulf.

Rural voters are not going to stop being an overwhelmingly Republican constituency anytime soon, for reasons both rational (on their own terms given issue priorities) and less so. But there is the interesting question of whether this can matter at the margin, especially with Trump not on the ballot. It’s an interesting question:

How will rural voters respond to this betrayal? Recent polls show that the Senate race in Iowa, which Trump won by 13 points in 2024, is now effectively a tossup. The heartland may be awakening to reality, with immense political consequences.

I wouldn’t bet on Dems winning Iowa, but it’s certainly one of the states Dems need to fully contest — they need to win some longshots, and the declining sentiment among rural voters combined with a strong Dem candidate makes not impossible.