Nebraska farmers reassess Trump loyalty as tariffs, beef imports squeeze margins

Yvette Mannon had already endured a brutal spring when the larger squeeze began. In April, a wildfire tore through her Nebraska ranch, consuming 1,600 acres of grazing land and destroying 21 kilometers of fencing. The 300 cattle survived, but the damage demanded immediate repair. Steel prices, inflated by Trump administration tariffs, had climbed to their highest levels in years. Replacing the fence cost $4.89 per foot—a total exceeding $300,000. Then came the secondary blow: with so much pasture gone, Mannon needed to deliver hay to her herd daily, and diesel prices, spiking because of the Iran War, had jumped more than 40 percent from the previous year.

Then in August, the Trump administration announced it would import 300,000 metric tons of duty-free foreign beef to lower consumer prices. The timing could not have been worse. The announcement landed just before the September-to-November window when most American calves are weaned and sold—the critical market moment for ranchers. The cattle market collapsed immediately. Mannon, 63, who had voted for Trump, felt the weight of the contradiction. "So we're 'Buy American', 'Let's Make America Great,'" she said. "But for you guys over here, sorry. It just felt like a betrayal."

Across Nebraska, a state that overwhelmingly backed the president in the last election, ranchers and farmers are reassessing their political calculations. The economic pressure is coming from multiple directions at once. Drought has already weakened crop yields and driven cattle herds to historically low levels. Tariffs have pushed up the cost of machinery, repairs, steel, and lumber. The Iran War has sent both diesel and fertilizer prices into the stratosphere. And now, the Trump administration's decision to open the market to foreign beef and Mexican cattle has sent already-volatile markets into chaos. Agricultural economists describe the industry as caught in a downswing of its typical 10-to-12-year cycle, after enjoying a particularly lucrative period of low supply and high demand. Many producers are now losing hundreds of dollars per head of cattle.

Jake Wolfinger, 45, operates a sophisticated feedlot near Lexington with 5,500 cattle—a operation he and his wife built from a dilapidated property they purchased in 2010. Neighbors point to them as proof that hard work still matters in agriculture. But Wolfinger did not anticipate the Iran War, tariffs, or foreign beef imports when he planned his business. He was selling cattle for $240 per hundredweight; now that price has dropped to $225. The loss per animal is substantial. His equipment runs through 400-gallon diesel tanks daily. "It really makes a guy think," he said. Wolfinger voted for Trump because he believed the country needed the president's spirit, and he remains frustrated with what he calls "woke DEI" policies on the left. Yet he is openly unhappy with Trump's intervention in the beef market. "People need to stay the hell out of farmers' business, because it's harvest time," he said.

Duane Kimball, 54, stands in his shed near Callaway surrounded by machinery and a large Trump banner. The daily cost increases, he said, are "kind of painful." He knows farmers who have had to return to their banks to increase lines of credit. Kimball believed the Iran War would have ended by now, but he stops short of blaming Trump for all his economic challenges. He points to regulations and rising costs that predate the current administration. Don Cantrell, whose family farm now spans 12,000 acres, admits the president "does some stupid things" and "says some stupid things," yet still considers Trump the "best president overall," citing the establishment of DOGE—the Department of Government Efficiency—as an example of necessary action. For many Trump-supporting farmers, the president's decisions, even when economically damaging, deserve the benefit of the doubt. "I think he's, for the most part, trying to run this country in the right direction," Wolfinger said.

But the economic reality is fracturing some loyalties. Don Batie, 67, retired from farming last year after watching corn prices fall from $7 a bushel in early 2022 to $4.29 three years later. Costs have not fallen with them. Tariffs and inflation have squeezed his bottom line so severely that he abandoned his lifelong dream of passing his 400-acre farm to his daughter. "It just wasn't going to work now," he said. He voted for Trump in 2016 and in the 2024 primary, but not in the general election, disappointed by the president's policies. He has heard similar dissatisfaction throughout Nebraska. "They're still strong Republicans," he said of those voters. "But they're not a Trump supporter anymore."

The political consequences are already visible. Dan Osborn, an independent candidate running against Trump-backed Republican Pete Ricketts in November's Senate race, is performing surprisingly well in the polls. Republicans appear aware of the discord. Both Trump and Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen have recently announced relief policies aimed at lowering fuel costs for farmers and ranchers. Yet the damage to trust runs deep. Jim Jenkins, 69, a former independent senatorial candidate and lifelong rancher on land his family homesteaded more than 150 years ago, has been so incensed by policies he believes are harming Nebraska agriculture that he wrote an opinion article in an Omaha newspaper over the summer. He is an outlier among his conservative neighbors—an outspoken Trump critic who did not vote for the president in any of his White House bids. When Trump was first elected, Jenkins hoped he would prove to be "a practical business guy." Now, he said, "I think he's been anything but practical." Jenkins feels the squeeze personally: high diesel, fertilizer, lumber, and steel costs, from barbed wire to fence posts. The uncertainty about what the next Trump announcement might bring keeps him awake at night.

Yet the industry continues. On a rainy Thursday in Broken Bow, buyers in cowboy hats and plaid shirts gathered for the regular indoor cattle auction. Calves still need to be bought and sold. Multi-generational ranch operations do not pause for politics. Mannon, standing on her fire-scarred land, captured the resilience that defines her world. "People in agriculture are eternal optimists," she said. "Otherwise we wouldn't get in it." But optimism, it seems, is being tested as never before.