A Trump voter turns away

Scott Thomsen, a fourth generation farmer in Kennard, Nebraska, voted for Donald Trump three times. He says he will not do so again.

The costs of Trump's policies

Thomsen says Trump closed the border with Mexico but everything else has hurt him. The Iran war has inflated prices and created more costs for farmers.

“He did close the border [with Mexico], which he doesn't get enough credit for. But everything else, this war with Iran, has inflated prices and created more costs for us.”

Diesel and fertiliser surge

Thomsen expected a bumper year but has seen diesel and fertiliser prices surge by forty per cent. Some equipment now costs three times what it once did.

The Iran strait blockade

The conflict in Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, choking off a global shipping route for fuel and other supplies farmers rely on.

Thomsen may not vote at all

The thirty-nine-year-old cannot bring himself to vote Democrat but feels so let down by Trump's Republican Party he probably won't vote in the midterms.

Senate seats now in danger

Republicans risk losing precious Senate seats in once-safe areas. In Nebraska, where Trump won by more than twenty percentage points in twenty twenty-four, Republican senator Pete Ricketts faces a surprisingly competitive race.

Rural voters turn against Trump

One poll by AP-KFF found fifty-seven percent of rural voters disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy.Reuters slash IPSOS found his approval rating among rural Americans has dropped to a new low of fifty percent.

Farm bankruptcies surge in Nebraska

Agriculture is the largest industry in Nebraska, with one in four jobs linked to it. The Nebraska Farmers Union says there has been a forty-six percent increase in farm bankruptcies this year.

Union leader blames Trump policy

Nebraska Farmers Union president John Hansen says farmers face a man-made economic crisis from policy decisions that did not work. The union has not endorsed Republican candidates this year.

“What we're facing right now is a man-made economic crisis … this did not just fall out of the sky.”

Tariffs used the wrong way

Hansen says tariffs can protect sectors from competition but Trump has misused them in a non-discriminating way, hurting American farmers. Tariffs with Canada are foolishness and bad economics.

“Tariffs with Canada is just foolishness and bad economics.”

USDA changes worsen the crisis

The Trump administration tried to reorganise the US Department of Agriculture but a federal judge temporarily halted the changes. Hansen called it the most radical public policy move in his fifty years in office.

“This is pouring gasoline on a fire and is making a bad situation worse all the while our congressmen, they're all Republican, have very little to say.”