Ed Maixner
[Washington, D.C./ By Ed Maixner, Journalist] In upset surprising pollsters and politicians in the United States and worldwide, Donald Trump, the American Republican Party candidate, won four years as president of the United States this week, riding to victory on a tidal wave of angry working class voters fed up with the central government in Washington, DC. Many still smart from the big recession of 2009 that they believe has cost them jobs and economic security, and they blame political leaders.
Although Clinton won the usually Democratic-leaning west coast and northeast regions of the U.S., Trump swept up strong margins across all southern states and nearly all other inland states, which takes in most of the country’s rural population, who typically favor Republican candidates. But he also won several northern Democratic-leaning states – Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and near-ties in Michigan and Minnesota – across what is called agriculture’s Corn Belt. Farmers and ranchers nationwide, in fact, chose Trump over Clinton by a 55 percent to 18 percent spread in an October survey by Agri-Pulse Communications, and agribusiness news outlet.
Trump’s victory was narrow, however, and will not give him a political mandate to take the kind of bold unilateral actions he promised throughout his campaign on both foreign and domestic matters. In fact, his principal opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, appears to have secured about 0.2 percent more of the popular vote while Trump collected more of the state-by-state tally of “electoral votes,” which officially elect U.S. presidents. In that voting system, each state’s voters elect a presidential candidate’s electors, who then submit a number of votes equal to the state’s members in Congress, but reflecting the popular votes for president in their state. The electoral votes are often skewed somewhat from the nationwide popular vote.
The partisan make-up of the Congress, with Republicans controlling the Senate and House of Representatives, might be expected to ensure support for Trump’s policy initiatives: Republicans will hold more than a 55 percent majority in the House of Representatives and a two-vote majority in the Senate’s 100 seats. However, Senate rules allow 40 Senators to block action in that chamber, thus letting Democrats to stop most any legislation. But what is more, many Republican House and Senate members were strongly opposed to Trump’s candidacy and policy positions: The party usually supports trade agreements, for example, and Trump is vehemently opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact drafted by the U.S., Japan and ten other nations.
The election is broadly viewed as killing chances for U.S. approval of the TPP, even though a majority in Congress would probably favor it, and President Barrack Obama might yet ask Congress to vote on the agreement this fall while he remains in office. Many farm commodity organizations see export opportunity in the TPP, and Chandler Goule, chief executive of the National Association of Wheat Growers, says they will pressure Congress for a vote before Trump takes office in January. The trouble is, some lawmakers have already declared the pact dead, and Republicans have little reason to spend time debating and voting on it because Trump could easily block its implementation.
Still, it is Trump’s loud anti-TPP speeches that lead many politically liberal farmers, such as National Farmers Union members, to vote for the Republican presidential candidate. “I know we had a lot of members who voted for Donald Trump,” said Roger Johnson, NFU president. “And they voted for him specifically because of what he was saying about trade. We think – very much as Trump argued – that our negotiators have not done a good job.”
“We’ve had a long term relationship with JA Zenchu, the largest cooperative in the world,” Johnson said. “Our position on these trade agreements has lined up very closely with their view, and they [JA Zenchur] have not been fans of Japan signing off on these trade deals. He says the problem is the promises we get with trade agreements, compared with the consequences,” which has been larger and larger U.S. trade deficits that drag American economic growth down. So Johnson calls Trump’s election “a major repudiation of what this country has done with trade for many years. It is not anti-trade; it is the way we’ve done these deals.”
Nonetheless, farmers will benefit on many fronts from Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and the presidency. Leaders in the House, for example, have advanced a tax reform plan that is quite similar to Trump’s tax change proposals.
“They are not exactly the same, but they’re similar,” said Patricia Wolff, tax policy advisor to the American Farm Bureau Federation. “One thing you can say for sure: The debate on tax reform is going to speed up and be more serious. It could actually pass” in Congress, furnishing farmers and ranchers with “opportunities for the more friendliness in the tax code,” she said. Leading lawmakers in the House expect to press ahead with their plan early in 2017, and it would likely include allowance for farmers to get unlimited deductions of business expenses from their income tax liability. The legislation might also repeal, or sharply reduce, the federal estate tax, which currently excludes the first $5.5 million in a person’s estate after death, but then applies a tax as high as 40 percent on the rest of the estate.
Trump has also pleased many farmers by moderating his controversial anti-immigrant threat to deport millions of people in the country illegally or lacking documents for legal residency – mainly from Central and South America. He continues to claim he will order a wall built along the U.S. southern border to retain illegal immigration, but Democrats and some Republicans in Congress would probably block the funding that would be needed for it. American farmers have had severe shortages of laborers in some regions, losing crews to arrest and deportation of workers by federal agents, and farm groups have plead for years for remedies to the problem.
Trump now says he would refocus deportations on illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, and that he would streamline and expand use of a visa program that accommodates seasonal farm workers.
And although Trump did not often address agriculture in his campaign speeches, his campaign officials recently promised AFBF, for example, to help ensure “a strong safety net for our nation’s farmers,” when the next farm bill, to be passed perhaps in 2018, is written. “The Trump-Pence Administration will be an active participant in . . . a good farm bill written by those who are thankful for our remarkable food system in this country.”
Cody Lyon, political affairs director for AFBF, says his organization has had “a good relationship” with Trump through the campaign, including a phone call by the candidate to an AFBF board meeting. “He showed a lot of concern about issues affecting farmers around the country,” including excessive regulation of farms. With next year’s partisan realignment of the legislative and executive branches of government, “We’re confident that we can work with members of the 115th Congress and the Trump Administration to get a good solid farm bill,” he said.
Most of the provisions of the 2014 farm bill apply through September 2018, but, Lyon said, “It’s always a good plan to start on a bill as complex as a farm bill as early as possible.” Johnson, of NFU, agreed: “I would be surprised if it were written in 2017, but they need to start on it in 2017 to get it done in 2018,” he suggested.
Although NFU most often aligns with Democrats, Johnson suggested his organization “might be aligned quite well with a Trump administration” if it is serious about supporting a strong economic safety net for farmers.
What’s more, “I think our members would pretty much agree with [Trump] about regulation: you know, they’re often onerous, over the top; sometimes nonsensical. There needs to be a sort of reset on how we do government regulations,”