As Donald Trump spins his abysmal economic record that failed farmers across the country, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement: 

“Donald Trump spent four years in office putting farmers last, and now he and his extreme allies are doubling down with an extreme Project 2025 agenda that would devastate rural communities across America. Trump can’t defend his failed record – his reckless policies bankrupted small farmers while siding with Big Ag and wealthy corporations. Now, Trump’s Project 2025 plan for rural America is to return to the same failed blueprint, but Americans aren’t going back. Voters will reject the Trump-Vance ticket at the ballot box because hardworking Americans deserve a president who fights for them.”

FACT: While Donald Trump started a reckless trade war that hurt and bankrupted farmers, farm bankruptcies have dropped under the Biden-Harris administration.

American Farm Bureau: “What a difference a year can make. After a near-record number of Chapter 12 farm bankruptcy filings in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Courts, Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings were down an incredible 50% in 2021. The number of Chapter 12 filings in 2021 is the lowest in the last decade and this is the first time in at least 10 years that there were fewer than 300 filings.”

HuffPost: “Farm Bankruptcies Soared 20% Amid Trump Trade War. It’s The Highest Rate In 8 Years.”

Bloomberg: “U.S. Farm Bankruptcies Surge 24% on Strain From Trump Trade War”

CNN: “Trump promised to win the trade war with China. He failed”

Des Moines Register: “Since taking office, the Trump administration has granted 85 refineries a pass from buying 4 billion gallons of renewable fuel, killing demand for 1.4 billion bushels of corn used to make it.”

Financial Times: “Farmers were already frustrated by the decline in soyabean, sorghum, ethanol and corn-based livestock feed exports as a result of the US trade war with China. In north-west Iowa’s fourth congressional district, goods exports to China fell by $558m in 2018 because of higher tariffs, the most of any district in the country, according to the US-China Business Council.”

PIIE: “China bought none of the extra $200 billion of US exports in Trump’s trade deal”

Trump and his extreme allies now want to double down on his failures with an extreme Project 2025 agenda that would devastate rural America.

Center for American Progress: “Project 2025’s Plan To Gut Checks and Balances Harms Rural America”

MSNBC: “‘This thing is nuts’: inside Project 2025’s agriculture plan that ‘guts rural communities, rural towns’”

The Hill: “Steep increases in logging. An end to federal environmental enforcement for farms. Work requirements for food aid. Fewer school meals for children. And the demolition of the network of farm subsidies that have backstopped Big Ag since the New Deal. These are some of the sweeping changes that would be made to American agriculture under Project 2025.”

FLASHBACK: Trump proposed massive cuts to the USDA every single year he was in office and sided with Big Ag over small farmers, and repeatedly prioritized the largest and wealthiest farmers over family farmers.

Politico: “Trump’s new budget: Ag on the chopping block”

“The blueprint also would cut $57.7 billion in mandatory agricultural spending by 2030, like lowering crop insurance subsidies, tightening eligibility for farm payments and gashing conservation programs — similar to Trump’s previous budget requests.”

Wall Street Journal: “Farmers Take a Hit in President [Trump]’s Draft Budget”

Bloomberg: “Trump Chooses Big Meat Over Little Farmers”

Politico: “The Trump administration chose meatpacking giants over farmers in USDA proposal, critics say”

“Farmers who hoped President Donald Trump would side with them over meatpacking conglomerates were dealt a blow after the Agriculture Department proposed changing rules governing fair competition in the industry.”

Bloomberg: “Trump Pledged To Help Small Farms. Aid Is Going To Big Ones.”

CNBC: “As small U.S. farms face crisis, Trump’s trade aid flowed to corporations”

“Donald Trump said the bailout program he rolled out in 2018 would help family farms weather his trade war with China, mostly through direct payments from the government. But roughly two-thirds of those payments went to the top 10% of recipients at the beginning of the year.”

New York Times: “Independent Watchdog Report Finds Inequity in Farm Aid Payments”