Farm-state Republicans don’t support President Donald Trump’s move to import cheap beef — but they’re still getting grilled for it.
Trump’s plan to combat sky-high beef prices by introducing discounted, tariff-free foreign beef has been widely condemned by ag-state Republicans who are concerned it will undercut the domestic beef industry and hurt ranchers, a normally reliable constituency.
And their opponents see an opening to paint Republicans as unconcerned about voters’ pocketbook concerns.
“Our ranchers and our farmers keep getting kicked in the teeth, and we have politicians that keep telling us that everything’s great, that we’re the hottest country,” Dan Osborn, an independent running for Senate in Nebraska, said in an interview. “And to be quite frank, I’m pretty pissed off about it.”
Osborn’s state is one of the top four top cattle-producing states — along with Texas, Kansas and Iowa — all of which have more-competitive-than-expected Senate races this cycle. And Trump’s controversial plan to remove tariffs from 300,000 metric tons of imported beef, sold at 25 percent below current market prices, is doing Republicans no favors.
Osborn’s campaign went on air with a pun-filled ad this week in which he says the import plan is “selling out American farmers and ranchers,” and blasts Congress for being “too chicken to stand up to the corporations who bought them off.” The campaign says it plans to spend at least six figures airing the spot. It’s the first major spending from a campaign focused on the beef import plan. But it plays into a larger economic argument Democrats are pushing to break through with farmers and ranchers: Trump and Republicans have turned their backs on rural America, as a worsening farm crisis and spiking fuel and fertilizer prices pinch agricultural communities.
“It’s part of a wider frustration,” said an adviser to one of the farm-state GOP senators, granted anonymity to speak openly. “I don’t think it sways anyone’s vote, but it isn’t a great look. … It isn’t fun for me to read the headline. It’s frustrating.”
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Osborn’s opponent, said in a statement he has a record of standing for his state’s agriculture community, “no matter who is president — from fighting Biden’s 30×30 plan to opposing this beef import plan.”
“Ranchers know the difference between a senator who delivers and a candidate reading a script his socialist ad agency wrote,” Ricketts said.
Farm-state Democrats and independents believe beef imports provide a window to speak to rural voters who have skewed red for decades but suddenly look more competitive amid Trump’s plunging political standing. A strategist working on Osborn’s campaign, granted anonymity to discuss strategy, said Osborn’s ad “codes as non-partisan in a way that running ads about taxes or healthcare doesn’t.”
Trump’s overall unpopularity is hurting Republicans across the map, but this policy could be especially problematic in a quartet of once-sleeper Senate races that could hand Democrats control of the upper chamber.
Spokespeople for the GOP nominees in Iowa and Kansas declined to discuss the issue, pointing to their candidates’ statements in August, when Trump’s plan was announced: Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) called Trump’s plan a “bad idea,” while Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) said the priority should be growing the U.S. cattle herd, “not flooding the market with imports.”
Last week, during a debate at the Kansas State Fair, Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton slammed the import plan as “a slap in the face of all of our cattle ranchers,” earning a raucous response from fair-goers, and hit Marshall for “tepidly respond[ing] to it as opposed to shouting like hell that this is not okay.”
In Iowa’s agriculture-heavy first district, Democrats have been on the air since June with an ad hammering Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks for record-high beef prices” and other cost-of-living increases under the Trump administration. The Republicans who were already getting hammered for high prices before now are now hobbled by a proposed remedy — one that has infuriated their own base.
When asked how Republicans should message the beef plan back home, Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, acknowledged there’s “certainly a lot of concern amongst our cattle producers.”
“I think they understand what’s going on. They’re just not pleased with it,” Boozman said. “We’re in contact with the administration, a lot of members are in contact, helping them understand the unintended consequences of it. We’d like to lower prices, but again, we don’t want the unintended consequence of lowering cattle futures significantly.”
That leaves ranchers worried that the import plan will undercut their struggling industry.
“President Trump wants to lower the price of beef, I think that’s where it’s coming from,” said Ben Menges, a cattle rancher in Arizona’s battleground 6th District. “The best way that President Trump can do that is by lowering the cost of fuel, not by importing a bunch of beef.”
Some Republicans have looked to turn the conversation into a culture war issue — hitting their opponents for past stances on meat consumption or veganism.
Vice President JD Vance, during a visit to Iowa Friday — which Hinson did not attend — slammed Hamilton, the pastor-turned-Democratic nominee for Senate in Kansas, for having a “kind of a ‘gee whiz, I’m a nice pastor’ vibe” who tells his congregation to “repent for their white privilege while eating beef.”
It’s an attack Marshall made at last week’s debate, hitting Hamilton for a sermon he delivered on climate change and the impact of meat consumption.
“I think the senator needs to repent for not standing up for the beef industry,” responded Hamilton.