Commentary: What can agriculture anticipate from D.C. next year?

By Matthew Viohl

With 2024 drawing to a close, Washington, D.C., is in a period of transition. Near the Capitol, several congressional offices are clearing out as new tenants prepare to take over. Two miles down the road, the White House is no doubt preparing for the same.

While federal agencies largely remain unchanged following major elections—aside from political appointees and their staff—talk of “government efficiency” has many wondering just how different life might get in the nation’s capital next year.

Donald Trump is set to become just the second president to serve nonconsecutive terms, following in the footsteps of Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th president. Maybe it’s time to update the saying, “Meet the new boss, same as the old(er) boss.”

There are signs this won’t be fully similar to President Trump’s first term though. The nominees for his cabinet positions appear to be more closely aligned to his own political beliefs rather than some of the more traditional picks from eight years ago.

While I won’t jump into the frenzy over specific nominees, what can we expect as an industry heading into 2025? The full reauthorization of the farm bill is all but dead barring any last-minute, lame duck theatrics. This means year three of Congress attempting to pass a five-year extension next session.

You may recall one of the Republicans’ key legislative victories in Trump’s first term was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed and signed into law in late 2017. It ushered in a number of changes to the tax code, including several items that were beneficial to agriculture, such as a stepped-up basis for inherited property and reduced pass-through tax rates.

Many of these changes are “sunsetting” though. This means they are timing out because they were never passed as permanent changes. Some of the limitations are due to the method it was passed: budget reconciliation.

This process allows the Senate to pass certain tax and spending measures with a simple majority instead of a “cloture-proof” vote of 60 senators. While Republicans are going from 49 seats to 53 in the new Congress, it is unlikely they’ll convince enough Democrats to support the tax changes they’re seeking. The expectation is that budget reconciliation will be used again to extend the tax measures.

Aside from the farm bill and taxes, border security and tariffs are receiving some of the most attention post-election thus far. On both issues, many in the agricultural industry are quite concerned about what the possible impacts could be.

We saw firsthand in 2019 that retaliatory tariffs can be extremely harmful to many commodities produced in the U.S., with billions in projected losses impacting a number of sectors. Soybeans are often mentioned first, but tree nut producers in California were negatively impacted as well.

It is impossible to predict which commodities or industries will be targeted by retaliatory tariffs, as we simply do not know whether Trump will follow through with his proposal to increase them on Mexico, Canada and China.

It could simply be a negotiating tactic ahead of taking over the White House, and if not, the three targeted countries could choose to implement increases across the board or make certain industries feel the pain more than others.

This line is also being used for plans surrounding “closing” the border and increasing the rate at which we deport immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While the issue of immigration and border security contributed to President Biden’s defeat, the total number of what we call “enforcement actions” was actually up considerably during his tenure.

Much of this was due to what are known as Title 42 expulsions, a policy President Biden worked on ending and that Trump could very well look to revive. Early talk from his transition team has focused on removing “criminal” immigrants who commit violent crimes and drug-related charges.

It is a fair question to ask what impact this might have on agriculture and other industries such as construction, and unfortunately, I simply cannot provide answers to something that hasn’t happened.

I’ll admit that is a bit of a cop-out, but I would point out that every president-elect has a long list of campaign promises and “Day One” commitments that are never kept. One of President Woodrow Wilson’s key slogans in 1916 was, “He kept us out of war,” which didn’t exactly hold up with our entry into World War I a year after his second inauguration.

While I would be pretty shocked if President-elect Trump did a 180-degree turn on some of his key campaign promises, nothing is set in stone until the ink dries. Until then—and after—we remain committed towards defending agriculture’s needs regardless of the party in power.

(Matthew Viohl is a director of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau. He may be contacted at mviohl@cfbf.com.)