10/31/2025
Matt Wyatt voted for Donald Trump last year in Iowa. Now he says Trump’s tariff policies are hurting his livelihood.
“Money is tighter than it should be,” said Wyatt, who works to grow corn and soybeans on close to 1,500 acres of land.
Iowa voted for Trump by over 13 points last year. But perhaps no state has struggled more with Trump’s economic policies. During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa’s gross domestic product dropped by 6.1 percent, more than any other state aside from Nebraska.
Manufacturing, which drives 17 percent of Iowa’s economic output, has been hit with higher production costs in part because of steep tariffs on inputs like aluminum 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. Mr. Trump’s war on renewable energy also threatens the wind industry that produces more than half of Iowa’s electricity.
(Source: The New York Times)
