He notes, however, that the president’s personal style of announcing drastic shifts in his thinking on a
public forum limited to a couple hundred characters can take its toll.
“We’d like to not have those surprise announcements – unless they’re positive, and we’re going to have a
big sale,” Sheets says with a smile.
Sheets and Tenneger are among those farmers in Iowa who say they stand by the president, if for no other
reason than a sense of patriotic duty. But not all farmers are as delicate when the subject of Trump’s trade
war comes up.
“I don’t even know what he’s complaining about,” George Naylor, a soybean farmer in Iowa, says.
Naylor says soybean prices are generally low, and the current pricing is not too far off from the norm, even
with the general trend line. The current price for a bushel is about $8.84, according to historical data, which
is pretty consistent to the prices seen going back until around the 1970s. And, prices were actually pretty
high during Trump’s predecessor’s tenure, with a high of $17.36 midway through Barack Obama’s
presidency.
“It’s all bullshit,” Naylor, a farmer for 42 years, says when asked about the trade war. “It’s just another
political stunt to make him look like some kind of a great nationalist.”
But, Naylor aside, many farmers seem to be standing with the president, at least for now. He may be
hurting their bottom lines right now, but he is at least willing to go to bat for what he believes in – even if it
is not always clear what his plan is to those on the outside.
Plus, Tenneger says, Trump is a straight shooter, and farmers like that quality in a leader. “The man calls a
spade a spade,” Tenneger says. “If he says, ‘this is how I’m gonna do it’, he does it. I don’t see him waffling
on stuff. So I really appreciate that.”
And, anyway, Trump is in too deep to turn back now, he adds. “At this point, he’d better not back up, or
we’re going to look pretty foolish.”