U.S. President Donald Trump at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 24, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump made a concerted effort to broaden his appeal with a coalition that included Latinos, independents, swing voters, Generation Z, tech bro and the Manosphere, among others. But he also focused on his hardcore MAGA base, which included far-right white evangelicals, rural Americans and farmers.
Farmers voted for Trump in big numbers in 2024, not unlike 2016 and 2020.
According to NOTUS' Tyler Spencer, however, Trump's policies are hurting American farmers — and GOP lawmakers are scrambling to find ways to ease the pain.
"As Congress prepares for a House floor vote on the Farm Bill next week," Spencer reports in an article published on April 27, "lawmakers are issuing dire warnings about what might happen to American farmers if an aid package doesn't pass. The past year was tough for American farmers, a downturn that the Farm Bureau has called a 'generational rather than a temporary slowdown.' Farm bankruptcies increased 46 percent in 2025 and are at their highest level since 2020, though fewer farms are going bankrupt than in the 2010s."
According to Politico reporters Grace Yarrow and Meredith Lee Hill, however, Democratic lawmakers have problems with a farm bill provision "that would shield pesticide makers…. from lawsuits." And on the right, Yarrow and Hill report, the bill is encountering resistance from the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement.
Spencer notes that an array of hardships are imperiling American farmers during Trump's second presidency.
"The combined costs of seed, fertilizer, equipment and other necessary materials have been rising steadily since 2021," the NOTUS reporter observes. "Retaliatory tariffs from China hurt American farmers’ business last year; and the cost of gas and fertilizer is soaring as a consequence of the U.S. war with Iran."
