Rural Trump Voters Won’t Regret Their Vote Until Democrats Fight for Them

Farmers, a core constituency for Trump, have been among the worst hit by his actions since taking office. For midsize and larger farmers, tariffs have prompted widespread anxiety that they are being squeezed from both ends: They’re facing higher costs on inputs like Canadian potash and steel for agricultural equipment, combined with a potentially dramatic loss of markets for soybeans, pork, and other commodities.

On top of that, the dismantling of USAID amounts to nearly $2 billion in lost sales for US farmers. For smaller farmers, the termination of the Farm to School program and the Local Food Purchase Program for food banks have eliminated more than $1 billion in markets for fresh produce, while undermining the effort to provide healthy food to kids and people in need.

And for farmers of all sizes, the suspension of contractual payments to farmers who’ve undertaken conservation, soil building, renewable energy, and other improvements to their farms is devastating. At least 30,000 of these farmers, who each expended tens of thousands of dollars based on USDA commitments, now find themselves in debt, unclear whether the promised reimbursements will ever materialize.

But farmers aren’t the only rural folks getting screwed.

Workers and small-business owners are increasingly worried about their livelihoods. Even before the latest round of tariffs, small-business confidence had declined for all three months of Trump’s presidency, with just one in five small business owners saying they expect sales and business conditions to improve in the near future. That uncertainty translates to less investment and hiring on the part of existing small businesses, and fewer new business start-ups.

For workers in bigger companies, the surge in union organizing seen under the Biden administration is running into a wall of anti-worker actions from Trump. These include the firing of pro-worker members of the NLRB such as Jennifer Abruzzo, replaced by Crystal Carey, a lawyer whose firm represents notoriously anti-union Tesla and Amazon. Trump has also eliminated the $17 hourly minimum-wage requirement for federal contractors while working to completely dismantle unions representing federal workers.

Veterans, who are more likely to live in rural areas, will be hurt especially hard by the double kneecapping of Medicaid and Veterans Affairs (VA). The New York Times reports that, in addition to layoffs, the VA has been rocked by DOGE’s abrupt return-to-work policy. VA psychiatrists who have, for decades, counseled veterans remotely, now suddenly have to conduct their sessions in open cubicles that lack privacy. Many of them are quitting in protest.

Fourteen million (nearly one in five) rural adults rely on Medicaid, a program Republicans aim to cut by $880 billion (roughly 20 percent of the program) over the next decade. Already struggling rural hospitals and clinics rely on Medicaid funds to stay afloat. Over the past 10 years, nearly 200 rural hospitals have closed, leaving their patients stranded a hundred or more miles from the nearest emergency room. Most of the rural hospitals that do remain open have eliminated their maternity wards. Slashing Medicaid spending will trigger further hospital closures and strain already paltry substance abuse, mental health, and Indian health services.

And then there are the millions of consumers just struggling to make ends meet. They’ve been hit not only by continued rising prices—the inflation rate has been between 2.4 and 3 percent since Trump took office—but by the elimination of protections from junk fees from banks and credit card companies. Joined by the Republican-controlled Senate, the Trump administration is eliminating the $8 late-fee cap instituted toward the end of Biden’s term, allowing companies to once again charge exorbitant fees to people who don’t pay on time. The lower average incomes of rural and working-class people make high prices and junk banking fees all the more difficult to manage.

Donald Trump carried rural America by a 40-point margin. He promised forgotten Americans he would unrig the system, address the opioid epidemic, and restore small towns to health and prosperity. Even more than most of his predecessors, Trump has betrayed those who placed their trust in him. Reversing the tidal wave of destruction he has unleashed requires that we on the left do something we should have done a long time ago: open our doors wide to the farmers, miners, truckers, house cleaners, automakers, and working folks—white, brown, and Black—who picked him over us. We don’t just need them to regain Congress in 2026. We need them to save our country.