Trump: Farmers ‘Lucky’ To Have ‘Privilege’ To Vote For Him

NASHVILLE, TN -- President Donald Trump told the annual convention of the Farm Bureau in Nashville that farmers were “lucky” he gave them the privilege to vote for him instead of “the other choice” in 2016.

"Oh, are you happy you voted for me. You are so lucky I gave you that privilege. The other choice wasn’t going to work out well for the farmers, I hate to tell you," Trump said.

The president did, as his prepared remarks indicated he would, praise the benefits of the recently passed tax package, including the planned repeal of the estate tax, which, the president will say allows farmers to keep their family farms. Only 5,200 estates - out of the roughly 2.7 million people who die annually - paid the tax in 2016.

The president also extolled the virtues of his deregulation effort and lauded low unemployment and record-high stock market averages, at one point asking rhetorically “Everybody happy with your 401(k)?”, referring to the employer-contributed investment pension account. Farmers are, by and large, self-employed and use the sale or renting of their land to provide retirement income.

But his roughly 40-minute speech to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s convention at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center repeatedly referenced the 2016 election and included numerous shots at Congressional Democrats and barely addressed the soon-to-expire Farm Bill.

In a speech earlier Monday, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue tried to ease farmers’ fears about the president’s plans for NAFTA, which is generally popular among farmers.

A task force created by executive order in April and chaired by Perdue recommended more access to global markets for America's farmers.

"Based on fair trade principles, international market access must be aggressively pursued and supported," the report said. "American agriculture needs and deserves policies that support and build on this success -- by opening markets abroad; by ensuring fair and science-based regulatory treatment for American products of all kinds; and by implementing strong enforcement policies that hold trading partners to their commitments."

Trump signed an executive order designed to increase broadband internet access to rural areas, another recommendation from the task force.

While rural voters certainly helped deliver an election victory for Trump, they are often at odds with him on trade agreements, like NAFTA, and on immigration issues. In 2016 farmers applied for more than 206,000 H-2A visas for seasonal migrant workers, an increase of nearly 230 percent since 2012, according to Department of Labor.

At a news conference during the Farm Bureau convention Sunday, Canada's agriculture minister Lawrence MacAuley struck a hopeful tone about the future of NAFTA.

"The U.S. trade to Canada and Mexico has quadrupled with the three countries combined, and the word is, not only with politicians, but with farmers and business people right across North America, is be careful not to break something that’s not broken," he said.

American farm revenues have declined for three straight years and are likely to fall again, according to Farm Bureau statistics, and the organization's president, Zippy Duvall, said the president, no matter his past rhetoric on trade deals, is likely to do what's best for the bottom line.

"I think this man is a business man, and he understands that our American companies, including American agriculture, has to be able to move their products and 95 percent of the population lives outside of our country. I think he has his way of going about negotiating and he has the best interest of the American people, and the American farmers and ranchers at the heart in trying to accomplish that," Duvall said.

Watch the full speech below.

Photo via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images News/Getty Images