On Monday afternoon, Craig Moss was testing out a new silage chopper. The machine can dice up an entire green corn plant into half-inch chunks before the milky pieces are packed tight into what Moss calls “big concrete bunkers” where they’ll ferment and become cow feed.
“It’s got a really distinct smell to it,” Moss told TPM in a phone interview. “You probably wouldn’t wanna eat it, but cattle love it.”
An average day on Moss’ farm in Sioux County, Iowa starts around 6:30 a.m. He works alongside Eric, his farm’s one full-time employee, and a part-time worker. His dad, 72, also joins but is slowing down, he said. Because Iowa had an unusually hot summer, he’ll harvest two or three weeks earlier than usual.
A fifth generation farmer, Moss knows all about what it takes to raise cattle. He can rattle off the three-and-a-half year cow maturation cycle in fluid prose accelerated by frustration.
“I’m gonna take you back to last October or so, and Trump’s standing in the doorway of Air Force One and he announces that he’s gonna bring in some Argentinian beef, duty free,” Moss recalled. “A reporter asked him once: ‘What’s your comment to the farmers and ranchers that you’re doing this to? … And he goes ‘They’ve made plenty of money for plenty of good time.’”
Moss remembers President Donald Trump making similar comments for a full month. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange futures market for cattle plunged for three weeks in a row.
“He took a lot of value out of that market, just because he said something,” said Moss. “It’s just really hard to stomach the fact that he can say something off the cuff, clearly doesn’t understand the life cycle of an animal.”
Moss, like 85% of the electorate in his Sioux County, voted for Trump; he cites his conservative social values. Now he estimates he stands to lose $250,000 “pretty easily” as a result of the president’s beef trade policies. That’s not to mention the impact of tariffs on machinery costs, spiking fuel and fertilizer costs caused by the Iran War, and the impact of financial market volatility on planning for a business wherein decisions are made years in advance.
Moss is aware that people will say he’s getting what he voted for.
His is a story that political analysts have highlighted as a potentially decisive factor in the outcome of November’s midterm elections. The road to victory or defeat may be paved through sprawling, fertilized fields. As the president’s policies oppress his rural electorate nationwide, his most recent actions have acutely affected voters who will decide crucial federal races in swing districts.
Trump announced last Friday that he was lowering tariffs on beef products from other countries, purportedly to address the high price of beef at the grocery store — his most recent policy to alienate Republican voters in key battleground areas. Then, by the weekend, he announced 50% tariffs on around $20 billion worth of Canadian imports. Canada struck back, announcing Tuesday retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on more than 700 U.S. products.
Trump’s executive actions, and the flippant nature with which he announces them, are hurting the political and economic landscape for Republicans ahead of the midterms.
“It’ll be interesting, that’s all I know,” Moss said about November.
The Cook Political Report shifted its Senate race ratings in Iowa and Texas from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” last Thursday, citing hard-to-ignore polling numbers and economic conditions including rising fertilizer and diesel prices. In Iowa’s 2nd Senate District, which includes Sioux County, the most recent Emerson College poll had Sen. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) narrowly leading her opponent, Rep. Josh Turek (D-IA). In July, Cook shifted Alaska’s Senate race between incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) from one in which Republicans were favored to a toss up, citing a ballot-related court ruling. (Pelota beat Sullivan in the state’s open primary on August 18.) Back in April, Cook shifted an Ohio Senate race to fill Vice President JD Vance’s old seat from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.” The race will be between Sen. John Husted (R-OH) and former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who’s vying for a comeback after losing in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).
Polling in these largely rural, increasingly swingy states also shows Democrats up at least some of the time.
At the Iowa State Fair last Friday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins backed Trump’s decision to lower tariffs on beef. Bryan Whaley, executive director of the Iowa Cattleman’s Association, spoke with Rollins there.
“I shared with her on behalf of the Iowa Cattle Association members, just our general disappointment in the move to bring in foreign meat … instead of focusing on the domestic market; that there are other things that are happening right now within our industry and in all of agriculture which are bigger topics to have,” Whaley told TPM, describing his conversation with Rollins. “And, what is the fascination about beef?”
Protein in general and beef by extension is experiencing a boom time in American culture, fueled by the fitness industry — a reality that makes it especially disappointing, for many, that Trump chose this moment to undercut cattle farmers’ profits.
“Things are changing so fast and one new headline or one new thing that pops up with the industry can significantly change a producer’s income or profitability or margins very quickly,” Whaley said.
The federal government should be looking to support policies that work to expand America’s shrinking cattle herds, Whaley told TPM. Instead, the Trump administration proposed a $4.9 billion cut to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for fiscal year 2027 representing nearly 20% of the department’s discretionary budget. The administration has proposed cutting $510 million from an agriculture research grant program, and Trump’s dismantling of the USDA has been blamed for the resurgence of a once-eradicated screwworm now threatening livestock populations.
Trump won Iowa, an increasingly reddening state, with 56% of the vote in 2024. In several rural counties, Trump earned more than three-fourths of the vote.
Whaley didn’t want to get too political or try to predict Iowa farmers’ voting habits come November. He noted, though, that industry discontent with the economic situation was growing.
“I think that frustration is probably more now than it was previously,” Whaley said.
Rural concerns about fuel costs extend beyond the price of diesel needed to power agricultural machinery. People in rural areas spend 44% more on gas than people in urban communities, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
And a long-simmering rural healthcare crisis exacerbated by Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” reconciliation package is further fueling economic anxieties. Dan Shea, a professor of government at Colby College, had his own bout with that crisis after missing an optometrist appointment last week. The earliest next appointment available was April 2027.
“That’s rural healthcare,” Shea told TPM.
Shea grew up in rural upstate New York and now lives in a rural community outside of Waterville, Maine, inspiring his interest in rural electoral trends.
“I remember when a lot of the rural politicians were Democrats,” Shea said. “I remember when a lot of rural voters were Democrats.”
The rural-urban political divide is new, said Shea, who is co-author of The Rural Voter, and geography is a defining characteristic of the electorate. While Black rural voters still overwhelmingly vote Democrat, for instance, they’re more likely to vote Republican than their urban counterparts. That is in large part because of economic anxieties over the future of rural communities, Shea found.
Maine does nearly half of all its trade with Canada. Trump’s trade war with our northern nextdoor neighbor stands to devastate blueberry, potato, lobster and wood product industries in the very rural New England state. Canada plans to impose 25% tariffs on lobster products and 50% levies on certain lumber products, the country announced Tuesday.
“There are a lot of issues that confront rural America,” Shea said. “They feel abandoned by the president in some ways.”
As Republicans increasingly lean on dated culture-war issues, like stoking panic about trans people in sports, social issues might not be enough to galvanize rural and farming communities facing direct blows from the Republican president. While he doesn’t predict a definitive leftward shift among rural voters, Shea said there’s a wide “enthusiasm gap” between GOP voters Democratic ones. People, he forecasted, will just stay home.
“Donald Trump would lose in the state of Maine right now. There’s no doubt about it,” said Shea. “But will Susan Collins lose? That’s a toss up.”
Good story, but I wish the reporter had pressed Mr. Moss on what he meant by “social values.” I’m tired of these people getting a pass on the fact they voted their hates and their resentments. And I also think it’s important for people who have a thermostatic vision of politics – that voters will ‘vote their pocketbook’ – to realize that as much as this salt of the earth farmer may rue losing the spare $250,000 he has in his pocket (!!), he’ll still pull the bar for the guy who promises to indulge his hates. Because politics isn’t logical. It doesn’t track material interest in any straightforward way. That’s why I cringe every time people assume affordability is the Democratic golden ticket. It’s one way in which they show their condescension to Trump voters. They think these people are misguided. But they’re not. Their calculus of what they want from politics is just different. And to train their ids away from hate voting, we need more messages than “we’ll lower your healthcare premium maybe!”