Where corn is king, King is threatened
by Tom Sullivan
The Corn King was my first giant. Outside a suburban Chicago supermarket he was dressed as a giant corn stalk. Or maybe a giant ear of corn. I don’t remember exactly. I was maybe eight. Like Andre, only lankier, he was hired by some Midwest food producer as spokes-giant for their bacon.
Out where corn is still king these days, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is as threatened as Iowa farmers.
Bloomberg reported this week that Donald Trump’s trade war has farm bankruptcies surging 24 percent across the Midwest, the highest since 2011. There were 24 total farm bankruptcies in Iowa in the last year. Not the highest number in the country — with 48, that honor goes to Wisconsin, a critical “hold” state for Trump in 2020 — but still no favor to King.
Farmers are increasingly dependent on federal aid to weather Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliatory actions. Amidst all that, Trump struggles to stave off impeachment and he and King fight for reelection:
Almost 40% of projected farm profit this year will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, federal subsidies and insurance payments, according to the report, based on Department of Agriculture forecasts. That’s $33 billion of a projected $88 billion in income.
The trade war and two straight years of adverse weather rattled farmers already facing commodity price slumps.
Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in the 12 months ended September rose to 580 from a year earlier. That marked the highest since 676 cases in 2011 under the chapter of the bankruptcy code tailored for farms. The total “remains well below” historical highs in the 1980s, the federation said.
Trumpland spells that “Winning!”
Meanwhile, Steve King, “the anti-immigrant Republican who dabbles in white nationalism,” faces political challenges from both Trump’s trade policies and 2018 challenger J.D. Scholten. Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Northwest Iowa, home to King’s congressional district, writes:
King’s hokum has earned him four GOP primary opponents next June. Last winter, House leadership stripped King of his committee assignments for the latest in a 20-year string of outrageous comments about Mexicans, gays and the superiority of white northern European cultures. King’s base here remains solid. Pro-life voters stand with him in this land of German Catholics, stoic Lutherans and Dutch Reform enclaves for whom abortion is the main, if not the only, issue. His public shaming serves King well as an embattled populist foil to the Washington elite who rig the game against us out here amid the swaying dry corn of northwest Iowa.
Scholten gave King, 70, a scare last year in an election that saw Democrats take the House. In Iowa’s 4th Congressional District, Republicans outnumber Democrats by 70,000. Scholten finished 10,000 votes short. “Last time I thought we could win,” Scholten said. “This time I expect we will win.”
While much of the state is in the throes of harvest, Scholten says he smells something in the corn dust. Farmers here are unhappy with President Trump for granting 31 petroleum refineries waivers from federal requirements that they blend corn ethanol into their gasoline. Corn prices dropped not long after. Former governor Terry Branstad, now ambassador to trade-conflicted China, warned Trump not to grant the waivers. Trump did it anyway. “They screwed us,” Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the state’s senior senator, admitted. (Corn prices are still up about 20 cents a bushel from last fall, near the break-even point for most growers.)
Two of Iowa’s biodiesel plants have shut down while others have cut production or gone to “hot idle,” meaning no production until markets improve, but no staff cuts for now. China was Iowa’s largest agricultural export market, writes Cullen, until the trade war cut soybean prices by a third.
Scholten is seeing strong turnouts in his tour of towns of 1,000 people or fewer this week, Cullen adds. Not bad for an R+11 district a year ahead of the election:
They warmed to Scholten’s populist call for antitrust enforcement in agribusiness, universal health care and a fair shake for forgotten places. Their questions were about ethanol, rising health-care costs and rural development. Nothing about impeachment.
“There is unrest in the towns that Trump forgot,” Cullen writes. Scholten’s Winnebago is visiting a lot of them in IA-4. Cook’s still ranks the district Likely Republican. Rank this contest “to be continued.”
Trump is now officially Florida Man.