For two weeks, the ag industry has been keeping a close eye on key appointments in the new Trump administration.
According to American Farm Bureau’s Vice President of Public Policy, Sam Kieffer, “What we’ve seen so far is, you know, the Trump administration first is moving faster than they did between 2016 and 2017 and some more decisively, but the one thing that’s predictable about President Trump is he’s unpredictable. So, we look forward to working with him. We had a good relationship with him in his first term, and we’re confident that, you know, we’re going to be able to have a good relationship. We hope to have a good relationship with the folks that they put in place, but again we need to make sure that, you know, governing is different than campaigning and we need to make sure that the leaders that are put in place also bring with them good number twos and number threes in that org chart to help make sure that we continue to have the safest, the most affordable, the most efficient agricultural industry on the globe.”
Keiffer says that there’s a lot of concern around the future of trade discussions, but there is a lot of fresh energy at the table right now.
“You know, what we anticipate is President Trump is going to be more bold, more engaged on that global scale, but he’s also using, you know, tariffs, you know, as a bargaining chip. And we’ve seen that he’s used tariffs in his first administration and that does have some repercussions throughout the agriculture community,” he adds. “We did see in the first administration that, you know, he was willing to use additional tools in his toolbox to mitigate, you know, negative impacts, but what we don’t know is if that option is there or the willingness is there. But we do know that there is going to be a renewed interest from an administration standpoint to be more engaged in the global front. And how do we grow American agriculture? We do it by getting access to more markets through trade space. So, we’re excited to see what’s happening there.”
Keiffer also noted that he looks forward to changes in tax policy. He stated that the Trump tax cuts have been extremely helpful to many farm family checkbooks.
