U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 25, 2025. REUTERS Nathan Howard
They said they'd stick with President Donald Trump until the end -- but this appears to be the end.
Over the course of his second term, President Donald Trump has repeatedly alienated the various voting blocs that carried him to office. Now, according to Foreign Policy, he’s angered one of the last groups that overwhelmingly supported him but has recently soured as his policies have failed them: farmers.
Farmers’ anger toward Trump has largely been driven by the disruption of energy and fertilizer supplies that have emerged as a consequence of the war with Iran. As Foreign Policy explains, “Global energy and fertilizer prices have skyrocketed as a result of the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran, which has throttled energy production across the region and strangled flows through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s hitting American farmers hard.”
But Iran isn’t the only factor that has farmers fed up. Even before the war, says Foreign Policy, American agriculture had been struggling due to Trump’s tariffs and attacks on immigration, the latter of which has exacerbated a preexisting labor shortage. What’s more, Trump gutted the Department of Agriculture and implemented funding freezes, which blocked millions of dollars in grants that farmers were depending on.
Now, they’re getting hit with sky-high diesel and fertilizer prices, and their frustration is mounting. Writes Foreign Policy, “A recent survey from Purdue University’s Ag Economy Barometer found that around two-thirds of respondents believed that the Iran war would have a ‘very negative’ or ‘negative’ impact on their farm’s net income in 2026. That’s compared to only about 13 percent of respondents who held positive views of the conflict’s impact.”
At the same time, farmers are losing faith in the Trump administration more generally: “According to the survey, the percentage of respondents who believe that the United States is headed in the ‘right direction’ also dropped to 52 percent in May, sharply down from 74 percent in July 2025. The share of respondents who believe the country is on the ‘wrong track’ has also surged, increasing from 26 percent in July 2025 to 48 percent this May.”
That shift is “significant,” said Wesley Davis, the chief agriculture economist at Meridian Agribusiness Advisors. “The farming community is typically supportive of the Republican administrations, and so that has been surprising to see — the frustration start to emerge in the data like that.”
Trump seems to know that he’s losing stature among farmers, as he flew to Wisconsin last week to participate in an agriculture roundtable and placate the base. But Foreign Policy is pessimistic that he’ll be able to turn things around.
“Some of the damage might be hard to reverse,” the magazine concludes. “Even after the massive bailout from the first Trump administration, U.S. soybean farmers lost considerable market share in the aftermath of the trade war that they still have not recovered. Barrett, the Cornell University economist, said that the Trump administration’s purported assistance likely pales in comparison to the farmers’ economic toll.”