CASSELTON, ND — Here in the nation's largest soybean-producing county, a snowy winter has left North Dakota farmers like Robert Runck with time on their hands before spring planting — time they've spent stewing over how much they'll lose if President Trump starts a trade war with China.
“If he doesn't understand what he's doing to the nation by doing what he's doing, he's going to be a one-term president, plain and simple,” said Mr. Rank, a fourth-generation farmer who voted for Mr. Trump. . Pausing outside the post office in this town of 2,300, Mr. Runck said the implications could be more immediate for Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican whose bid against Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat , is complicated by the proposed tariffs.
“If it's not resolved by election time, I would imagine it would cost Kevin Cramer some votes,” he said.
Steep warnings are coming from across the Midwest about the political risk to Republicans of Mr Trump's recent course of action, in which tariffs he slapped on foreign competitors have sparked retaliation in US agriculture. Soybeans are America's second-largest export to China, and the country's proposed 25 percent tariffs on the crop would hit hardest in states like Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota — where there are highly competitive House races — as well as Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota, whose Senate contests may determine control of the chamber.
By proposing the tariffs, Mr. Trump moved to fulfill a central campaign promise: to deal with countries he believes are undermining American industry. But his goal — to revive the steel and aluminum industries, thereby helping the Rust Belt states that were critical to his election — has effectively prioritized one element of Trump's political coalition over another, larger bloc of voters. This largest segment, the rural belt, is essential to Republican success in the midterms and beyond.
From the still-thawing soybean fields of North Dakota and Kansas to the corn and pork farms of Iowa, voters across the political spectrum say the president's attacks on America's economic rivals could do serious damage to an already volatile goods market.
“They're out of touch with the reality of the Midwest and the impact tariffs would have,” said Bart Bergquist, a biology professor and part-time farmer who lives on 10 acres just south of Waterloo, Iowa. Mr. Bergquist, who voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, added that commodity prices had already weighed on the region.
“I know my neighbors don't have money — they're trying to supplement what they can to keep going,” she said.
Representative Rod Bloom, a Republican, represents much of eastern Iowa and faces a highly competitive race in what is the nation's second-largest soybean-producing congressional district. He and other politicians face a “nervous” farm community across the state, according to Grant Young, an Iowa-based Republican strategist.
“I listen to the farm show during my lunch hour at WHO every day,” Mr. Young said of Iowa's flagship radio station. “They're usually a happy group promoting the industry and holding a two-hour infomercial for Farm Bureau. But for the last two months I've been wondering if they need to take the sharp objects out of the studio.”
In Kansas, Bob Henry, who grows corn and soybeans in another busy House area near the Nebraska border, said the country could not afford to mess with a market that American farmers rely on.
“For the United States soybean producer, China is the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” Mr. Henry said. He suggested Beijing is demanding political retribution against the Republican heartland: “China knows who elected Trump.”
After an initial round of tariffs on a modest share of US exports, the Chinese have shown a keener awareness of the electoral map and moved to punish industries whose misfortune will be felt most acutely in key states and regions in 2018.
Karl Rove, a former chief of staff to President George W. Bush, said a trade conflict “would limit the enthusiasm of the Midwesterners from our base and limit our ability to hold on to what we have and take more ground.” Mr. Rove also grumbled that Mr. Trump “has little to no understanding of the farm coalition.”
He may have a slightly better view after a meeting last week in the West Wing with a small group of Republican senators and governors, in which two of them mentioned the negative impact the tariffs could have on exports in the midterm elections. to officials briefed on the conversation.
Mr. Trump used the summit to direct two of his top economic advisers to reconsider whether the United States should join a free trade pact with a group of Pacific nations. But hours later, she noted on Twitter that she was unlikely to reverse course on that deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Instead, there are already whispers, in Washington and in the farm states, that the president risks a repeat of President Jimmy Carter's grain embargo on the Soviets, which contributed to the massive losses the Democrats suffered in 1980.
Indeed, after a year in which Mr. Trump only considered withdrawing from Nafta and was blocked by Congress in his bid to cut the Agriculture Department's budget, there is now a sense that Mr. Trump's eagerness to punish the China could cause real economic and political damage to its own political base.
“This is the first time it's been in your face, especially for us in the Midwest,” said Ed Schafer, a Republican former governor of North Dakota who was secretary of agriculture under George W. Bush.
There may be no other race in America that is both as important as the Senate race here and as shaped by whether China's tariffs go into effect this year. Most of North Dakota's votes are in the eastern tip of the state, in the Red River Valley — an area that also happens to be home to the three largest soybean-producing counties in the nation.
Sen. Heitkamp won her seat by less than 3,000 votes in 2012. She remains personally popular, a valuable asset in a state of just 570,000 voters, but North Dakota has drifted sharply away from Democrats in recent years.
But Mr Trump has now given her what may be a political gift.
“Senator Heitkamp is going to jump on big, bad Trump and the stupid policy coming out of Washington that is hurting our farmers,” Mr. Schafer said. “This is a powerful message to North Dakota.”
Or as Rob Port, a conservative radio host and columnist in the state, put it: “This is the perfect topic for her. Her base is gobbling up the Trump punch, but it's also an economic argument that will have rural Trump voters saying, “Maybe blind faith in Trump isn't such a good thing.”
Ms. Heitkamp is already testing such a message against her opponent, Mr. Cramer.
“He clearly sees his role as being a vote for President Trump in the United States Senate,” he said. “And I believe my role is to vote North Dakota into the United States Senate.”
Mr. Cramer, whom Mr. Trump has repeatedly invoked in his bid for the Senate, accused his opponent of “hysteria” and said he was overstating what at this point were just trade negotiations.
“People in North Dakota prefer humility to exaggeration, and that kind of exaggeration I don't think sells very well politically,” he said. “But it's certainly not good for our farmers or good for our economy.”
But on a local radio talk show, Mr. Cramer vented his frustration with the president's actions. “He tends to have rather emotional reactions,” she said of Mr. Trump.
North Dakota isn't just another red state where Democrats are about to disappear. There is an enduring populist streak here, dating back to his distrust of distant bankers and millers in Minneapolis, Chicago and New York. To this day, the state maintains a state-controlled bank and mill.
“We're Republicans until it's time for farm subsidies,” George Blank said, half-joking, as he sipped coffee with a half-dozen retirees at their daily breakfast and bull session at Casselton's Country Kitchen.
And, Mr. Blank noted, “everything is moving in that state.”
Recalling his years running a construction supply business in a state where one in four jobs is related to agriculture, he said, “When the price of corn dropped, it hit us hard.”
Now, however, soybeans have become the preferred crop, said Vanessa Kummer, who farms 4,000 acres with her husband and son near Colfax, N.D. “It's become our cash crop and our most reliable crop to go to. “, he said.
Nancy Johnson, who heads the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association, struck a cheerful note of optimism for the upper Midwest as she hoped the threat of tariffs was just “a negotiating tactic” by Mr Trump. But Ms Johnson, who wears a soya necklace, said her farmers were “rightly worried because they are using us as a weapon”.
On William Hejl's farm in Amenia, ND, just north of Casselton and part of the 86 percent of the state that consists of farmland and ranches, stress is as hard to miss as April snow crunching underfoot.
Showing a visitor his gleaming green John Deere tractor, still in its shed for the winter, Mr. Hejl said to “visit in August” — not just find better weather.
“If this thing isn't resolved, then it's going to hurt,” he said of the start of harvest. “You have to pay for the fuel and for the people to drive the combine.”
Kevin Skunes, a neighboring farmer who is also president of the National Corn Growers Association, joined Mr. Hejl and a visiting reporter for coffee, a brownie and a chance to sound the alarm.
“In an already depressed farm economy, if we take another hit to soybeans and corn, it will be devastating,” Mr. Skunes said.
Back outside the post office in Casselton, Mr. Runck found his voice almost drowned out by the sound of the speeding Burlington Northern Santa Fe – the same freight train that will carry crops west to the Pacific this fall.
But his answer was clear when asked whether he would support Ms. Heitkamp or Mr. Cramer: “I think the president needs to do the right thing between now and the election.”
