Summer Ory, with two of her children at home in Earlham, Iowa on October 23. The state has become a stronghold for US President Donald Trump. Now, his efforts on trade, energy, and immigration are squeezing farmers, disrupting labour and threatening industries. Photo / Kathryn Gamble, The New York Times
When United States President Donald Trump announced a US$20 billion ($35b) bailout for Argentina this month, Larry Ory, 86, a farmer in Earlham, Iowa, could hardly believe it.
That’s especially after boatloads of Argentine soybeans began shipping to China, a once-critical customer for Ory’s family.
For Iowans, losing China’s soybean market in the President’s trade war was only one of many economic shocks that have hit the state since the start of Trump’s second term.
The cost of tractors and fertilisers have shot up with his tariffs.
Labour has grown scarcer in agribusinesses. Major manufacturers have laid off workers.
Even the ubiquitous wind turbines that provide income for some Iowa farmers are in the President’s sights.
“Right now, we’re fighting different economic wars all at once,” said Summer Ory, 37, the wife of Larry Ory’s grandson, Dan. The couple work in the family’s farm business.
“You can sustain it one at a time, but right now it’s death by a thousand paper cuts.”
Summer Ory said she votes in every election, but she, like Larry Ory, declined to say who she cast her ballot for last November.
Since siding with Barack Obama twice, Iowa has become a stronghold for Trump.
Yet perhaps no American state has struggled more with his economic policies. During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa’s gross domestic product dropped by 6.1%, more than any other state aside from neighbouring Nebraska.
Manufacturing, which drives 17% of Iowa’s economic output, has been hit with higher production costs in part because of steep tariffs on imports like aluminium and steel.
Meatpacking plants, which help make Iowa the nation’s leading pork producer, rely heavily on foreign-born workers, hundreds of thousands of whom saw their legal status stripped away by the President.
Trump’s war on renewable energy also threatens the wind industry that produces more than half of Iowa’s electricity.
Some of the state’s troubles, like bad weather, high interest rates, an ageing and shrinking rural population, and global commodity prices, are beyond the President’s control.
But new economic policies have magnified the state’s woes, according to economists, agricultural groups and some business leaders.
“This is as challenging as I’ve seen it,” said Kirk Leeds, chief executive of the Iowa Soybean Association. “We’ve got uncertainties beyond compare.”
Next year’s Midterm elections could indicate how Iowans feel about those policies.
At least two competitive House districts will be up for a vote. The state will also choose a replacement for its retiring Governor, Kim Reynolds, and a retiring Senator, Joni Ernst. All those posts are held by Republicans.
“People are hurting everywhere in Iowa, and they’re looking for something different,” said Josh Turek, a Democratic state House member running for Ernst’s seat.
Trump has argued that the tariffs will help protect American jobs and rectify trade imbalances, while enforcing immigration laws will free up work for citizens.
“There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labour force,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said, adding that the President was “capitalising on that untapped potential while delivering on our mandate to enforce our immigration laws”.
And many Iowans remain loyal. Doug Keller, 63, who farms about 25km southwest of Waterloo, said he was hopeful the President will reach a new trade deal with China that will benefit farmers in the long run. Matt Wyatt, 51, who also voted for Trump, agreed.
“Money is tighter than it should be,” said Wyatt, who works with Keller to grow corn and soybeans on close to 600ha of land. “But we try to stay optimistic around here.”
For now, times are tough. Iowa is the country’s largest producer of corn and second-largest producer of soybeans. America exports as much as half its soybeans, and the vast majority of that had gone to China — US$12.6b ($22b) worth last year.
China stopped purchasing soybeans from the US to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs.
American producers have spent decades working with people in China on how to use soy in animal feed, part of an effort to build up that growing market.
Leeds said he has travelled to the country 25 times and used dollars paid by Iowa farmers to foster strong bonds with Chinese importers.
“I’m not exactly sure how we repair some of these relationships,” Leeds said.
The President’s bailout of his ally, President Javier Milei of Argentina, has rankled many Iowans, since China moved immediately after it was announced to lock up Argentine soybean exports to fill the gap from Beijing’s boycott of American soy.
“Who are you subsidising, our competitors or us?” Larry Ory asked.
Iowa’s large beef industry then recoiled after Trump suggested he would try to lower the cost of beef by importing more from Argentina.
Bryan Whaley, chief executive of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, said Trump’s comments rocked cattle markets, and a volatile market “provides less of an opportunity for our producers — cattlemen and women here in Iowa — to make decisions that are going to help keep them profitable and viable”.
The President said he will take some money raised by his tariffs and “give it to farmers” as a bailout, but that is not necessarily welcome news.
“We would much rather farm with no federal assistance whatsoever,” Wyatt said. “We want to be able to sell our products for a good value, and normally we can.”
John Gilbert, a farmer in Iowa Falls, said he expected the government payments to favour larger agribusinesses and to drive more consolidation in an industry that has been dominated by big corporations.
“The payments are skewed to the bigger guys,” said Gilbert, a Democrat whose family has about 325ha of land for grains and livestock.
Growers are also contending with tariff-induced price increases on seeds and fertiliser, some of which is imported from Russia and Canada.
Prices for monoammonium phosphate, a fertiliser with both nitrogen and phosphorus, are up 14%, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
As he deals with those higher prices, Aaron Lehman, a fifth-generation farmer in rural Polk County, said he will continue to use his more than 25-year-old, worn combine.
A machine with greater power and a more sophisticated GPS system would cost upward of US$100,000 used and more than US$250,000 new, he said.
Lehman wondered whether his 26-year-old son could realistically earn a living working fulltime on the family farm.
“Our farms, and lots of farms, are having to assess if there’s real opportunity for years down the road,” said Lehman, who serves as president of the Iowa Farmers’ Union.
The economic pain has spread beyond agriculture to truckers who transport seeds and grains, agronomists who help farmers innovate, and the Main Street restaurants where farmers eat and drink.
“Everywhere you turn, people are asking, ‘How are you going to make it?’” Summer Ory said.
Dan Ory, 37, her husband, called it “just the perfect storm”.
John Deere, a leading manufacturing employer that makes agricultural equipment, has laid off hundreds of workers from its Iowa factories this year as sales decline and tariffs on steel and aluminium cost the company more than US$300 million.
Employment in Iowa’s food manufacturing is down too. Peter Orazem, an economics professor at Iowa State University, linked that to layoffs of migrant workers.
JBS Foods, a Brazilian meatpacker, laid off approximately 200 workers from Haiti, Cuba, El Salvador, and Honduras at a plant in Ottumwa in June, said Paulina Ocegueda, vice-president for the local chapter of LULAC, a Hispanic civil rights organisation.
“It’s not costless to replace that number of workers,” Orazem said. He added that it was “difficult to find domestic workers who take these jobs”.
In Waterloo, some Haitian workers lost jobs at a Tyson pork processing plant, said Yves Fleurima, a community outreach co-ordinator for World Grace Project, which helps refugees and other new migrants in Waterloo find employment.
Workers had received letters from the Department of Homeland Security telling them their legal immigration status would be terminated and they should leave the country, he said.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said humanitarian parole programmes “undercut American workers” and allowed “poorly vetted” people into the country.
JBS employs more than 5000 people at four production facilities in Iowa, according to Nikki Richardson, a spokesperson for the company. Two more plants are under construction and expected to create close to 1000 additional jobs in Iowa, she added.
“We are focused on hiring team members who are legally authorised to work in the US and will continue to follow the guidance provided to us by the US Government,” she said in an email.
Tyson did not respond to requests for comment.
Iowa has a long history of welcoming immigrants. In the 1970s, Robert D. Ray, a former Iowa governor, accepted thousands of refugees from Southeast Asia who were displaced after the Vietnam War.
The state continued to bring in refugees and ranked 13th in the country for refugee arrivals per capita, according to a 2023 report. Other immigrants are drawn to Iowa’s quiet towns and factory jobs, said Alejandra Escobar, the lead organiser for Escucha Mi Voz, an immigrant-led advocacy group based in Iowa City.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not appear to have conducted workplace raids in Iowa this year, but fear has permeated several cities, according to church leaders and some local officials.
At La Placita, a Hispanic grocery store, taqueria and meat market in Waterloo, business has declined by 25% over the past three months, the owner, Manuel Carrillo, 48, said.
Iowa’s renewable energy sector is also facing uncertainty, driven by what appears to be the President’s personal animus towards wind power.
The Trump Administration and Congress have cut funding for major renewable projects, phased out renewable energy tax credits and issued new rules to make it harder for some projects to qualify for those credits.
The impacts might be modest in Iowa, according to Steve Guyer, a senior lawyer at Iowa Environmental Council, because the state has already heavily invested in wind energy. Still, he said the new rules must be navigated, while tariffs raise the cost of new turbines.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Pooja Salhotra
Photographs by: Kathryn Gamble
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