Republicans are fighting for political survival in farm states including Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, and Michigan, and Donald Trump’s policies are giving rural voters plenty of reasons to reconsider their loyalties. Tariffs have battered overseas markets while mass deportations have deprived farms of labor.

At the same time, rising diesel prices have increased operating costs for an industry already confronting severe financial pressure. Farmers are being squeezed by higher expenses, tighter margins, disrupted exports, and a workforce that has become harder to find.

This is not Trump’s first trip through the agricultural wrecking yard. During his first term, his policies also hurt farmers, forcing Republicans to pour billions of dollars into farm bailouts intended to limit the damage.

Yet rural voters overwhelmingly supported Trump again in 2024. They returned him to power despite already having watched his policies hammer their livelihoods, and now rural America is once again getting the expensive consequences.

The fertilizer market offers a particularly vivid example. American farmers require large quantities of potash, a potassium rich salt that serves as one of the basic ingredients in fertilizer, and roughly 90% of the potash used by American agriculture comes from Canada.

Canada is the world’s largest potash producer. Other major producers include Russia and Belarus, which face Western sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China, another country caught in Trump’s trade wars.

Having a major producer next door should have been a tremendous advantage for American farmers. Instead, Trump picked a bizarre fight with Canada, demanded that it become the 51st state, imposed tariffs, and repeatedly antagonized Canadian leaders.

Trump’s war in Iran also closed the Strait of Hormuz, the transit point for one third of the world’s potash supply. Other fertilizer costs soared as a result, with nitrogen fertilizer getting hit particularly hard and adding another expense for farmers already under strain.

Trump then announced what he presented as a solution on Truth Social: “The United States is working on a massive Deal with respect to the purchase of Potash from Belarus. The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers.”

The plan would replace fertilizer supplied by a democratic ally next door with fertilizer from a repressive dictatorship aligned with Vladimir Putin. There was just one rather important flaw in Trump’s supposed triumph: Belarus does not have the large volumes of potash available to sell.

“Belarus cannot supply the United States with large volumes of potash, its leader, Alexander Lukashenko, said, seemingly refuting U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Washington was in talks with Minsk to purchase the vital agricultural fertilizer,” UPI reported.

Lukashenko offered an even blunter reality check. “Even if we wanted to supply [potash] to other, Western markets, we simply do not have those volumes—everything is contracted for this year.”

Even if Belarus had sufficient supplies sitting around, shipping them would present another problem. Belarus is landlocked, the European Union bans Belarusian potash imports, and major shipments headed for the United States would likely need to travel through Russian ports.

Trump’s grand plan therefore amounts to reducing reliance on Canadian fertilizer by attempting to purchase unavailable potash from Putin’s closest ally and potentially moving it through Russia. Farmers understand that the promised supplies are not available and that the consequences could hit by the next growing season.

The broader financial picture is already grim. Farm bankruptcies rose 46% last year, including a 70% increase in the Midwest, while fertilizer and fuel are becoming more expensive, export markets remain disrupted, and agricultural labor is increasingly difficult to find.

Food shortages and historically large farm bankruptcies are now among the dangers Republicans could face before the 2028 election. Even the best outcome described in the source would leave farmers paying painfully high prices for whatever fertilizer they can secure, adding pressure to inflation and grocery costs.

The bitter punchline is that this damage was self inflicted. Trump could have done nothing, taken credit for former President Joe Biden’s economy, and left conditions relatively normal, but instead his chaos is landing squarely on some of his strongest supporters.

The political question is whether rural voters will finally connect those policies to their own economic survival. After tariffs, deportations, soaring costs, vanishing fertilizer supplies, and another round of financial pain, farmers must decide whether cultural grievances still matter more than their way of life.