By Donnelle Eller, Des Moines Register
After Iowa’s U.S. House delegation voted against blocking President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, some Iowa farmers say the state’s Republican representatives are failing to protect them from added costs during a time of extreme financial hardship.
Lawmakers are pushing back, saying Trump’s policies will bring farmers new opportunities.
In a call organized by the Iowa Democratic Party, farmers Berleen Wobeter, Ryan Marquardt and Dave Muhlbauer, all of whom have sought public office as Democrats, said Wednesday, Feb. 18, that Trump’s tariffs are damaging export markets and raising costs for machinery, fertilizers and other supplies. At the same time, they said, his decision to allow Argentina to import more beef to the U.S. undermines the prices they receive.
The Iowa delegation’s “talking points are not an acceptable response for the growing disaster here on the ground in Iowa,” said Wobeter, a cattle, corn and soybean producer in Tama County. “Rather than being part of the solution, they are contributing to the problem by supporting chaotic tariffs and trade policy and failing to pass meaningful legislation or a long-overdue Farm Bill.”
U.S. farmers are facing a fourth year of expected losses, a downturn exacerbated by the tariffs Trump has levied on the trade partners including China, Canada and Mexico, some of largest buyers of U.S. farm goods.
In a narrow vote last week, the GOP-majority U.S. House passed a resolution that would terminate Trump’s use of national emergency powers to put punitive trade measures on Canadian goods. Six Republicans and all but one Democrat voted in favor of the resolution that would reverse a 25% tariff on the neighboring nation’s exports.
Iowa’s all-Republican House delegation — Reps. Ashely Hinson, Randy Feenstra, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn — voted against the measure. The bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is unclear. Trump is expected to veto any bill that reaches his desk.
“We’d love to see some actual oversight in… the executive’s ability to exercise tariffs,” said Marquardt, a Madison County cattle producer. “As farmers, we’re tired of being a pawn… and we’re tired of being sacrificed.”
Wobeter said Trump’s often repeated declaration that “we love our farmers” is meaningless.
“We’re not feeling the love, when beef imports from Argentina… cut into our profits,” she added, “Because somehow, paying farmers a fair price for work to raise high-quality beef in a challenging environment is asking too much.”
Trump said his goal in signing the Feb. 6 order allowing Argentina to send an additional 80,000 metric tons of lean beef trimmings per year to the U.S. is to lower consumer prices. But Muhlbauer, a corn, soybean, cattle and hog producer in Crawford County, said the imports — valued around $800 million — will have little effect other than boosting profits for meatpackers.
The industry is dominated by four large companies with 85% of the market: JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods and National Beef Packing Co. In November, Trump called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the companies for “potential collusion, price fixing and price manipulation.”
Trump policies allow China ‘to just set us aside and move on,’ farmer says
Trump’s trade war with China also came in for criticism.
Marquardt, vice president of the Iowa Farmers Union board, said Trump’s punitive measures against China during his first term alerted the country to its reliance on the U.S., and Beijing has been adjusting ever since, making significant investments in Brazilian ports for exports of that country’s grain.
China has “spent the years since basically buffering against something like this happening again, and they put themselves in a very good position to just set us aside and move on,” he said.
Last year, China stopped U.S. soybean purchases for about five months, turning instead to Brazil and Argentina.
“The Trump administration left us with tariffs that cost us valuable trade, which we’ve never fully recovered. And here we are again,” Wobeter said.
In November, Trump said China had agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in the last two months of 2025, and 25 million metric tons annually through 2028.
While U.S. negotiations are ongoing with China, those annual purchases would be about 20% below the level in 2017, the start of Trump’s first term.
Republican lawmakers say Trump’s efforts will reap rewards
While the farmer trio criticized Trump, Hinson came to his defense, saying in a statement Wednesday that he “is the only one willing to level the playing field and deliver new market opportunities.”
“While reversing decades of failed ‘America Last’ policies won’t happen overnight, we must secure strong, enforceable trade agreements that open markets for our farmers ASAP,” said Hinson, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the pending retirement of fellow Republican Joni Ernst.
Hinson noted that she and other Iowa Republicans sponsored a bill to launch an investigation of the rising price of fertilizer, of which Canada is a major world supplier.
Feenstra, a gubernatorial candidate, also stood by Trump, telling reporters Tuesday that the administration is opening more markets. “China’s continuing to buy more. We’re looking at other Asian countries, along with Europe and African nations… we’re going to open more markets,” he said after an event in West Des Moines.
Addressing the role of governor, he said it’s about “pushing new markets for our great state. Again, if we can get those commodity prices, get corn above $5 and get beans at $12, we’re going to be winning.”
In another effort to boost farmers’ revenues, Feenstra is co-chair of a task force looking at how to achieve year-round sale of E15, gasoline blended with 15% ethanol. While E10, with 10% ethanol is sold year round, the higher E15 blend is seasonally banned in some regions because of clean air regulations that the ethanol industry says are outdated.
Iowa is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and grower of corn, with about half the state’s annual crop used to make ethanol.
Feenstra said a bill providing for year-round E15 could come as soon as Monday. The ethanol industry says it would increase annual corn demand by about 2.5 billion bushels, helping to push up prices in Iowa and elsewhere.
A spokesman for Nunn said the farmers who spoke at the Democratic event are liberal Democratic activists.
“Zach Nunn actually sits down with hundreds of farmers across Iowa’s 3rd District to discuss the issues impacting Iowa’s producers, eliminating Canada’s 200% tariff on Iowa dairy, investing $66 billion in family farms” through increased safety net program support over the next decade, “expanding export markets for Iowa ag products, and advancing nationwide, permanent, year-round E15,” Mark Matava, Nunn’s spokesman, said in an email.
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