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Trump’s empty promises and the ruin of rural America

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by Max Burns, opinion contributor - 04/15/26 9:00 AM ET

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by Max Burns, opinion contributor - 04/15/26 9:00 AM ET

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President Trump’s second term has been nothing if not a laundry list of broken promises. But few Americans have suffered more from Trump’s deceptions than the nation’s struggling farmers.

It’s no secret that family farms have had a rough go of it over the past decade. An average of 373 farms have failed every year since 2015. The stress of simply surviving has led to a nationwide mental health crisis in resource-starved farming communities.

Trump captured 62 percent of the rural vote in 2024, 4 points better than his performance in 2020, based largely on promises to lavish prosperity (and federal money) on small farms on the verge of collapse.

Like so many Trump promises, the help never arrived. The suicide rate in rural communities is now 3.5 times the national average and climbing. Farmers buckle under the financial strain of crippling agricultural tariffs, rising input costs and a president who didn’t bother to mention them once in his most recent State of the Union address.

After years of loyalty to a Republican Party that has worsened their lives, rural voters are finally weighing their options ahead of November’s pivotal midterm elections. Are Democrats ready to seize the moment?

Trump’s plummeting national approval rating recently scraped a record low amid voter frustration with rising prices and the ongoing war in Iran. The economic hangover effects of his economic mismanagement aren’t lost on rural Americans. His tariffs on agricultural products decimated demand for U.S.-grown crops, with Chinese imports of American soybeans plummeting nearly 80 percent. The situation is severe enough that the American Soybean Association, an industry trade group, took the rare step of publicly criticizing the administration for misleading farmers about future Chinese purchases.

Tariffs on steel, rubber and replacement parts mean farmers are also paying more to keep their machinery working. Some imported replacement parts are no longer available at all, and the costs of buying new equipment are enough to send some small farms into debt. The average price of a new tractor was roughly $190,000 in 2019; today, a similar tractor retails for about $330,000.

Operational costs are also rising at the same time international crop sales are falling, squeezing farmers who are already barely breaking even. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and disruptions in the global natural gas market have driven a spike in fertilizer costs from roughly $795 to nearly $1,000 per ton. Farm equipment also runs on diesel fuel, which has jumped by more than 50 percent since the beginning of Trump’s war in Iran.

The result is an often fatal debt spiral. According to data collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, total U.S. farm sector debt is forecast to reach a record high of more than $600 billion this year. The White House has responded to rising rural need with a slap in the face. Trump’s proposed 2027 budget slashes the Agriculture Department’s budget by 19 percent and completely defunds the farmer-friendly $1.2 billion Food for Peace program. Trump is also gutting the Rural Business Service, which promotes rural economic development, and cutting the Agricultural Marketing Service budget by $61 million.

Republicans might point to Trump’s $12 billion “farmer bail-out,” which was intended to relieve some of the pain caused by his administration’s tariff policies. Despite explicitly promising the bailout to cash-strapped small farmers, more than half of all federal aid went to industrial farmers and giant agribusiness firms that were also major Trump campaign donors. On average, small farmers received less than $5,000 each in payments — while major agribusiness companies pocketed checks averaging about $180,000. In total, more than 60 percent of the farm aid Trump authorized in 2025 went into the pockets of the nation’s largest Big Ag titans.

As rural voters decide whom to trust to keep their farms afloat, Trump and his Republican enablers must reckon with the struggling small farmers they have left behind. Trump’s economic and foreign policy misadventures have created the worst economy for American farmers since the last time he was president. His own administration anticipates the pain will only get worse in the coming year. Is this the golden age our farmers were promised?

Rural Americans deserve better than Trump’s empty promises. This year, they will have an opportunity to remind Republicans that their votes shouldn’t be taken for granted. If our farm comm