People in rural areas are generally more likely to live in poverty, and are hurt more by policies that roll back social services.
This article appears in the October 2024 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
With the possibility of another Trump presidency, Democrats have directed much media attention toward Project 2025, the 922-page document laying out a far-right conservative governing agenda. The policies proposed under Project 2025 range from slashing social programs to banning abortion nationwide to eliminating corporate regulations.
People in rural areas are generally more likely to live in poverty and lack access to important social services than their urban and suburban counterparts. So as disastrous as these policies would be for most Americans, they would hit rural communities hardest. In fact, many similar policies have already been enacted in rural parts of the country, resulting in higher poverty rates, weaker infrastructure, and poorer health outcomes.
The Biden administration has received praise for its work in breaking up corporate monopolies, revitalizing infrastructure, and funding social programs for low-income households. These policies have played an outsize role in strengthening America’s rural communities, from improving health outcomes to increasing economic participation. But questions remain about whether these rural revitalization efforts will continue under either a Harris or Trump presidency.
AGRICULTURE SITS AT THE INTERSECTION of many, though not all, aspects of rural policymaking. Not only does it concern America’s food system, but it’s also relevant to issues like trade policy, corporate concentration, and climate change.
Consolidation affects various parts of the rural economy, but it’s especially prominent in agriculture. Large companies like Tyson and Smithfield receive the bulk of government agricultural subsidies and can use their economic and political power to control various aspects of agricultural production. Small farmers—especially young, female, and minority farmers—struggle to compete, often going into debt or being forced to sell their land. Even the inputs for farming, like seeds and equipment, are dominated by big players like Bayer and John Deere.
There are laws in place to ensure fair prices and markets for smaller farmers, like the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, which governs livestock and poultry production. But the Trump administration weakened those laws on behalf of big agricultural companies. They even eliminated the division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) meant to enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act, and folded its duties into the Agricultural Marketing Service.
The Biden-Harris administration’s pursuit of antitrust legislation has started to level the playing field for small farmers. For example, the USDA has enacted clearer standards under the Packers and Stockyards Act to prevent discrimination, retaliation, and deceptive practices against livestock producers. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have halted multiple mergers, stemming corporate monopolization in industries like food and shipping. And the DOJ filed suit against Agri Stats, a middleman that gathered comprehensive data about poultry and other meat markets and enabled large farming interests to effectively collude to raise prices.
“When you start taking on big corporations, you help workers and small businesses everywhere, but especially in rural communities. Because in rural places, the economies are much less diverse, so one or two big corporations can run the show,” said Anthony Flaccavento, co-founder and executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative.
A Trump presidency could end these regulatory efforts. Project 2025 specifically states that departments like the USDA “should play a limited role” in agricultural markets, focusing on removing “governmental barriers that hinder food production.” One of those so-called “barriers” is sustainable agriculture.
Through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offers food producers technical and financial assistance to engage in climate-friendly agricultural practices. But much of the money going toward EQIP has been funneled to corporations whose practices are damaging the environment, said Sean Carroll with Land Stewardship Action.
“When this program was created, part of the program said, we’re not going to use any of this for confined animal feeding operations,” Carroll said. “And then the industry lobbied and removed that protection.”
Project 2025 also includes the elimination of any policy that protects certain communities from discrimination. This could mean, for example, that the USDA’s standards on discrimination against farmers could be nullified. BIPOC farmers and growers would face more difficulties entering or staying in agriculture.
Protectionist trade policies are often touted as a way to maintain fairness between domestic farmers and foreign markets, but farmers and consumers often shoulder the costs of these policies. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018, China retaliated by imposing its own tariffs on agricultural products. The resulting trade war raised the price of food and burdened people living in agricultural areas.
Despite this, the use of tariffs against China is still politically popular across party lines. Biden has left most targeted tariffs in place, and Harris is likely to do the same as president, said Matt Barron, a political consultant with MLB Research Associates. Trump is reportedly planning to increase these tariffs and impose them across the board, despite the negative effects increased tariffs could have on the economy.
AGRICULTURE IS JUST ONE ASPECT of rural policymaking. One that is at times overlooked is health care. People living in rural communities are less likely to have private or employer-sponsored health insurance, so Medicaid coverage is often the only way they can afford medical treatment. People in rural areas, especially children, disproportionately rely on it for low-cost insurance, said Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.
Hospitals serving large numbers of Medicaid recipients and low-income uninsured patients also receive increased Medicaid funding through disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments, intended to offset uncompensated care. Rural hospitals and health clinics rely on DSH payments as a source of revenue. And this makes an especially huge difference in reproductive care.
According to a 2024 report from the University of Minnesota’s Rural Health Research Center, over 58 percent of rural counties did not provide hospital-based obstetrics care. People in these areas who need reproductive care usually have to drive long distances to more metropolitan areas to access services, meaning they are less likely to receive needed prenatal or postnatal care. For states that have not yet expanded Medicaid, more rural hospitals have closed or stopped providing ob/gyn care due to lack of funding.
The Democrats have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to building rural support.
The Biden administration’s investments helped close crucial gaps in health care in rural communities. The American Rescue Plan of 2021 allowed states to extend pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage from the federally mandated 60 days to 12 months. As of August, 47 states have implemented the extension. In 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services announced over $100 million in awards to train nurses, midwives, and other nurse faculty. While not directly related to Medicaid, this will help address the disproportionate shortage of ob/gyn care in rural areas.
There are multiple proposals within Project 2025 to cut Medicaid funding, from capping federal funding for state programs, to moving toward individual high-deductible plans, to “voucherizing” Medicaid.
“Medicaid would be cashed out instead of providing a comprehensive array of benefits,” Park said. “You would receive as an individual some amount of funding to purchase coverage on your own in the individual market, and presumably an individual market that looks more like an individual market before the Affordable Care Act than the individual market we have today with the marketplaces.”
These proposals would make health care more expensive, which would deter people from seeking medical treatment. It could also lead to interruptions in care due to the addition of red tape, Park said. This is particularly dangerous, as it means rural people would be more likely to delay prenatal or postnatal care.
ANOTHER SOCIAL PROGRAM WITH MAJOR IMPLICATIONS for rural health is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP allows primarily low-income families to purchase fresh and healthy food. In 48 states, the SNAP benefits are fixed, meaning those living in lower-cost areas have more purchasing power. A 2019 study from the Journal of Health Economics found that children in SNAP-recipient households in areas with lower food costs not only improve their health through their diet, but they are also slightly more likely to receive medical care.
One complication with this is that many rural areas aren’t located close to a grocery store. This means that even if a household receives SNAP benefits, their only nearby food source is a local dollar store. Some dollar stores may have a limited stock of fresh fruits and vegetables, but they primarily sell unhealthy, overly processed foods. These stores have been replacing independent grocery stores primarily in rural, low-income, or predominantly Black communities since the 1990s, leading independent grocers to exit these communities. And when compared to urban areas, the resulting loss of stores and employment decline lasts longer.
Through the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Department of Transportation provides billions of dollars in grants to support the development of public transit in rural areas. This could help people in rural communities travel more easily to grocery stores. But SNAP and DOT grants may both be on the chopping block under a Trump presidency, making fresh groceries less affordable and less accessible for rural communities.
One of the few policies that would likely remain in place under either administration is the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The CTC currently allows households making under $200,000 (or $400,000 for those filing jointly) to claim a tax benefit of up to $2,000 for each qualifying child. As a fixed benefit that does not vary by state, the CTC has more impact in areas with a lower cost of living, which is often true for rural areas.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have supported expanding the CTC. Trump first increased it in the 2017 tax bill from $1,000 per child to $2,000 and raised the phaseout threshold. Those measures expire in 2025. In 2021, Biden increased the credit from $2,000 to up to $3,600 for younger children, but the policy expired at the end of that year and was not renewed.
This time around, both parties are talking about a permanent expansion, and the upcoming tax fight in 2025 provides an opportunity. Trump and J.D. Vance have mused about a $5,000 CTC, though they have provided few details; Harris has endorsed bringing the CTC back to where it was in 2021, with an additional bump for newborns to a total of $6,000 in the first year.
“What we would like to see is it made fully refundable in whatever tax bill that we see in 2025 so that the families with the lowest incomes can continue to receive it,” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, deputy executive director of policy at the Center for Law and Social Policy. Refundability means that poorer families without any tax liability can still claim the credit. “That was the change that caused child poverty to be cut almost in half in 2021,” Lower-Basch said.
IN ADDITION TO FUNDING SOCIAL PROGRAMS for all working-class Americans, the Biden administration has enacted several initiatives specifically targeted toward rural development. The aforementioned bipartisan infrastructure law has invested billions of dollars toward clean water, broadband connectivity, wildfire protection, and other services.
The Democrats have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to building rural support. In many rural districts, Republicans have run unopposed for decades, leaving few electoral options for progressive voters. At the same time, Democrats running in these areas have historically struggled to gain party support or funding at the federal or state level, instead being left to run campaigns largely on their own.
Additionally, past Democratic administrations under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama made concessions to corporations at the expense of the rural working class. This has contributed to mistrust among voters.
“People felt let down by Obama,” Barron said, referring to an initiative to crack down on consolidation and anti-competitive treatment in the agricultural industry. “Obama had taken some baby steps. He’d held some hearings, and then his people at the Justice Department left for corporate jobs, big law firms, and Wall Street, and nothing happened, and people felt burned.”
With corporate donors still courting Democrats this election, there are questions about Harris’s commitment to uplifting the rural working class. In that regard, her VP pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, helps add some credibility.
“I’ve been a little bit nervous about Harris, because she’s surrounded herself with some people that are trying to push her back towards a Clintonian kind of Democratic politics,” Flaccavento said. “Easing up on the corporations, giving them a break, cutting them some slack. And I think that selection of Walz will help solidify her stance on anti-corporate and pro-rural, pro-farmer, pro-worker.”
There have also been growing efforts to support rural progressive candidates and reach out to voters in these areas, much of which came after Trump won the 2016 presidential election. An August call hosted by Rural Americans for Harris-Walz brought together politicians, celebrities, and activists from across the country. Attendees spoke about the importance of approaching rural issues with nuance and empathy. Harris also recently hired Matt Hildreth from RuralOrganizing.org, a powerhouse in organizing in small-town America, as her rural engagement director in the swing states.
Trump had four years to uplift rural America. He did little, but maintained rural support. Biden did more but received little goodwill to show for it. Harris will likely carry on Biden’s efforts; whether she’ll get more out of it remains to be seen.
