Trump touts promises after painful year for farmers

AUSTIN, Texas — U.S. farmers are wading through some of their toughest years in recent history, beset with trade wars stoked by Donald Trump and weather disasters scientists expect to worsen due to climate change, a phenomenon the president dismisses.

Yet, growers gave Trump a warm welcome at this year’s American Farm Bureau Federation conference here, with members of the traditionally right-leaning group — the industry's biggest lobbying organization — saying they remain optimistic the agriculture economy is on the mend.

Most of the two dozen farmers POLITICO interviewed at the convention sang the president’s praises, with many citing his moves to roll back Obama-era efforts to protect more waterways from pollution and restrict pesticides, as well as new trade agreements with China, Japan, Mexico and Canada.

“We’re used to adversity,” said Chadd Strew, a rancher in Comanche, Texas. “Renegotiating trade to try to get more out of our products here is going to be a benefit even if in the short term there is a little bit of a decline.”

Trump addressed the convention on Sunday for the third year in a row, basking in loud applause of farm country’s largest annual gathering. And the visit is crucial political maintenance for a president less than 10 months away from Election Day, with few other venues where he can shore up his support among dozens of voters in farm states from a single podium.

"The best days for America's farmers are yet to come," he told the crowd.

And Trump had some successes to tout: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement Congress passed last week and the so-called phase one trade deal with China. He also plans to release some $28 billion in subsidies his administration set aside for farmers and ranchers targeted by retaliatory tariffs over the last two years.

“This is an incredible success for our entire country. And it was your fortitude, perseverance and devotion that made it all possible,” Trump said of the new trade pact. “China respects us now.”

Trump hailed the $80 billion of U.S. agricultural products China pledged to purchase over two years as part of its end of the deal.

But economists and commodity markets aren’t sure how quickly sales will return to pre-trade war levels, especially after China inserted a caveat about how its purchases will be based on “market conditions.” Tariffs on U.S. farm exports worth billions of dollars will also remain in place — although exemptions will be granted more frequently. Commodity prices, especially for crucial products such as soybeans, have gone down since the deal was signed last week, an indication of the skepticism around the promises.

Despite the agreement, American exports to China have a long way to recover.

Sales of U.S. farm goods there in 2018 were $9.1 billion, a 50 percent drop from a year earlier and much lower than their peak, $26 billion in 2012, USDA data shows. The department is forecasting a boost this year to $11 billion because of higher pork and soybean sales.

Still, farmers pointed to the deal with China as evidence of Trump’s farm-friendliness.

“It’s been a little bit more difficult at times when we couldn’t see which way they were going” on trade, said Ben Moore, a farmer in Northwest Tennessee with 3,500 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle and hogs. But he said the president “assured us for the past three years that he knew what he was doing, and it’s obvious with his final signing that he did.”

Trump on Sunday also said a spike in net farm income since 2017 highlighted how successful his administration has been for the industry, without noting how much of that increase is due to subsidies from taxpayers, such as the trade bailout for agriculture and the more than $5 billion in disaster aid authorized by Congress over the last two years.

Farm subsidies reached their highest levels in more than a decade last year, totaling $22.4 billion — nearly a fifth of farmers’ total cash receipts. Trade aid accounted for $14 billion of that sum, up from $5 billion the previous year, according to USDA data.

But underneath the patchwork of government support, there are several indications their economics remain on shaky ground: There was a rise in bankruptcies last year after falling in 2018, and loan delinquency rates reached their highest level since 2012, according to the Farm Bureau’s review of FDIC numbers. Still, both measures of financial health are well-below historical highs.

“It’s been a tough year for cotton farmers,” said Donald Vogler, who farms 3,000 acres of cotton in Lamesa, Texas.

“Weather is always the biggest deal for us,” he said. “Prices haven’t been that good either, but we’re not blaming the government for that.”

Jerry Warren, who has a 2,050 acre farm with corn, soybeans and pigs in Indiana, said the federal aid helped him survive an unusually wet spring planting season and prices softened by the trade war with China.

“That does help,” said Warren, who declined to say how much he got from the program. “I greatly appreciate that [Trump] took the tariff money and made the market facilitation program to kind of help with that.”

Although Trump has presided over — and in some ways, exacerbated — such a tough economic climate for agriculture, farmers and ranchers said they are hardly turning to any of his potential Democratic challengers.

The conservative group of rural voters POLITICO spoke to said they were wary of the progressive policies unveiled so far by the Democratic candidates. They worry that a Democratic White House would saddle them with new environmental regulations and write in higher taxes. And they say other candidates are mostly shying away from the tough trade talk that has kept them loyal to Trump.

“My fear is, largely the Democratic Party has overlooked the center part of the country,” said Stewart Hughes, a Kentucky farmer with 110 cows, vegetables and grain on 700 acres. “The middle of the country has not been a focus except for Iowa, where there is a caucus.”

On Sunday, Trump misleadingly said he has given “unprecedented support” to the ethanol industry. But the administration had to modify its biofuels policy after pushback from key Midwestern lawmakers and lobbying groups, who argued it undercut demand for corn and ethanol after Trump’s EPA exempted a record number oil refiners from their obligations to blend ethanol into the fuel supply. However, the administration did approve gasoline with higher levels of ethanol to be sold year-round.

The administration also hasn’t pushed to fix the Labor Department’s visa program for migrant farmworkers, which could help ease the industry’s labor shortages.

But on stage in Austin, Trump was in his comfort zone, making overtures of patriotism to farmers like “America-grown” and “upholding American values,” and his passion for defending them against “unfair” trade deals.

It appealed to many of these rural voters who look beyond their own bottom lines and government data when assessing the president’s record.

“We see absolutely nothing other than Donald Trump,” said Vogler, the Texas cotton farmer. “My personal income is secondary to my national pride in the United States.”