Donald Trump is on the verge of betraying some of his strongest supporters in rural America, a report suggests.
The president-elect has threatened to impose sweeping tariffs that could wreck agricultural producers, who also depend labor from the undocumented migrants that he intends to deport by the millions. That combined with a purported intention to slash spending on Medicaid and education could devastate small-town communities, reported The Atlantic.
“I don’t think [the Trump agenda] is going to lead to a dramatic reversal of these partisan shifts, because the truth is that the disdain for the Democratic Party is decades in the making and deep in rural America,” said Nicholas Jacobs, a political scientist at Colby College and the author of the 2023 book The Rural Voter. "It’s hard to imagine that rural [places] will not suffer and will not hurt, and it’s hard to imagine that rural will not respond.”
Trump trounced vice president Kamala Harris by about 60 percent to 40 percent in the nation's roughly 3,100 rural counties, and the New York City native maintains a visceral connection with rural voters who believe he will fight the nation's "elites" on their behalf.
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“I think rural people are rejecting the idea that the devil we know is worse than the devil Trump may bring,” Jacobs said.
Trump slapped tariffs on foreign trading partners in his first term that forced him to disburse more than $660 billion in payments to farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs imposed on U.S. agricultural products, but the U.S. agriculture industry still hasn't fully recovered from those policies, and experts believe his threats against China and Mexico could do even more damage.
"The worst-case scenarios are really bad,” said Sandro Steinbach, the director of the Center for Agricultural Policy and Trade Studies at North Dakota State University.
Trump's planned mass deportations could do even more damage to American farmers by raising their labor costs, which would then be passed on to consumers through higher food prices.
“It is a stretch to think that if you start deporting undocumented labor, rural people who are hanging out in town are going to step in and fill those jobs, or people are going to move back to the countryside,” Jacobs said. “There is very little evidence to suggest the labor market would self-correct in that direction.”
Republicans have prioritized cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act that would put the existence of rural hospitals at risk, and Trump has said he would pursue a nationwide federal voucher system, like proposals that rural voters have shot down in multiple states, that would provide parents with taxpayer funds to send their children to private schools.
"Throughout three elections, Trump’s messaging — particularly his hostility to racial and cultural change — has resonated strongly in rural communities," wrote The Atlantic's Ronald Brownstein. "His second term may test whether that deep reservoir of ideological support can survive policies that threaten the material interests of rural America in so many ways."