Vance rallies Iowa Republicans, says Trump’s trade policies benefit farmers

COUNCIL BLUFFS — Vice President JD Vance told Iowans Friday that President Donald Trump’s trade and tax policies have helped farmers and working-class families, as he worked to rally support for gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn and other Iowa Republicans in the midterms.

Trump’s tariff policies have been a point of concern for Iowa farmers over the past year. Vance said the administration’s actions were necessary to reverse “bad trade policy, let’s be honest, from both Democrats and Republicans,” which he said “made it impossible for Iowa farmers to get their food to market.”

He spoke at a midday rally hosted by the Republican National Committee at the Mid-American Center in Council Bluffs.

“We now have, thanks to Donald Trump’s hard work and fighting on behalf of Iowa farmers, 2 billion new consumers all over the world who are now open to American food instead of closed to American food,” Vance said. “Corn exports are up by 35%. Markets that were closed to our beef and dairy for decades are taking Iowa beef and dairy today, and China has committed to buying $17 billion (in agricultural products) from our farmers just this year.”

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, annual corn exports grew from $13.71 billion to $18.55 billion from 2024 to 2025, roughly returning export values to the levels seen in 2021 and 2022. Some farmers have expressed concern about Trump’s decision in August to suspend tariffs on imported ground beef to lower the cost of meat, which cattle producers said would have a negative impact on U.S. herds.

He also said the president had focused on prioritizing building domestic markets for American agricultural producers.

“What does it mean for the safety of our kids, of our grandkids, when we let foreign countries, many of which do not have our best interests at heart, when we let those foreign countries buy our food?” Vance said. “So what Donald J. Trump did when he came into office is he said, we are done with that. We are growing American food on American farms for American families. And I always tell you, ladies and gentlemen, whenever you hear me talk during this midterm campaign, I’ll say Rome was not built in a day. Because we know there’s a lot of work to do, but just two years in — not even two years in — President Trump has cut that deficit by 42%, and it’s fallen even faster this year.”

A critical component of supporting the Trump administration and Republicans’ goals on agriculture, Vance said, was electing Republicans in Iowa, including Lahn. Vance called Lahn, a businessman who owns a family farm in Belle Plaine, a “person who wakes up every single day and thinks about how we can defend the jobs, the prosperity, and the public safety of Iowans from every single walk of life.”

“Zach is going to be a fighter, ladies and gentlemen,” Vance said. “That’s what we need. We need somebody who’s willing to stand up, stand up and protect your families. Stand up and protect your farmers and your farmland. Stand up for every single Iowan who’s been told to sit down and take it, who’s been told that they’re backwards if they believe that Iowa farmland ought to belong to Iowans. Who’ve been told they’re racist for believing that Iowa schools ought to go to American citizens, and not to the foreign-born.”

The vice president said Lahn “is going to be a great ally to those in Washington who are fighting for you as opposed to against you.”

Lahn spoke before Vance at the rally, where he told the crowd his campaign for governor was focused on preserving Iowa for the next generation. He said this means “defending the institutions that hold our culture together — the local communities, the church, the family, and ultimately, let me say this, ultimately, it’s the individual. This is what the West was ultimately built upon.”

“I want the next generation to grow up in the Iowa that we grew up with, the Iowa that we love,” Lahn said. “I want them to build a life here, build their families here, prosper here, and someday give something back to their children that was even better than what we gave them.”

Lahn said Vance got into politics and his current position “because he wanted to defend culture.”

“And I cannot wait to work with him, to work with Vice President JD Vance to defend the culture of Iowa and America,” Lahn said.

Vance’s Iowa event comes as the state’s elections are positioned to play a critical role in determining control of Congress. Iowa currently has an all-Republican federal delegation, but political forecasters say three of the four U.S. House seats will be highly competitive in the Nov. 3, 2026 midterms, in addition to the races for U.S. Senate and governor.

Republican incumbents in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Districts were already projected to face tight races, but on Wednesday, Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved the 2nd Congressional District race to a “toss-up,” writing, “Iowa seems like enough of a potential problem for Republicans that IA-2 merits being a Toss-up, too.”

Council Bluffs is located in the state’s one congressional district not expected to be competitive in 2026. The seat in Iowa’s 4th District, a longtime conservative stronghold, is open in 2026 as current U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra ran for Iowa governor — losing in the primary to Lahn. Political forecasters favor Republican nominee Chris McGowan to win against Democrat Dave Dawson in the general election. McGowan, who spoke to the crowd of roughly 400, told voters to “ignore the polls, let’s get out and vote.”

Republican voters in the region could play a large role in statewide elections, like the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. “What we’re gonna do, and especially in Iowa 4, we’re gonna turn out to make sure the rest of the state carries Zach Lahn to victory,” McGowan said.

Lahn faces Democratic state Auditor Rob Sand in the election.

Vance made critical comments about Sand in his speech, saying he was falsely presenting himself as a moderate candidate — a line of attack used by other Republicans on the campaign trail.

The vice president said Sand was “a man who is cut from the exact same cloth as Adam Hamilton and James Talarico,” referencing Democratic candidates running in Kansas and Texas. Vance said while Sand’s campaign advertisements highlight him “groaning about partisanship,” the Democratic candidate has “spent his entire life working for and donating to far-left Democrat causes.”

“Rob Sand has spent this whole campaign running away from the things he spent the rest of his career fighting for, and now he’s banking on voters being too dumb to see what’s happening,” Vance said.

On the campaign trail, Sand has said his time in the auditor’s office shows that he is willing to go against the Democratic Party, citing his decisions to have independent and Republican senior officials at the state auditor’s office, as well as his decision to reject a request from the Democratic National Committee on public records regarding the alleged “wrongdoing by (Gov.) Kim Reynolds.”

Vance also claimed Sand “is a billionaire who has repeatedly fought against tax cuts for middle-class Iowans.” Lahn released a campaign ad in August also calling Sand a billionaire. Sand’s only income is listed as his $103,000 salary as state auditor in campaign ethics disclosures. But the Lahn campaign told KCRG the comment references Sand’s wife, Christine Lauridsen, who owns the Lauridsen Group, a family-owned business with hundreds of millions in annual revenues — though the private company’s or the Lauridsen family’s net worth is not publicly available information.

Maddie Moher, press secretary for Sand’s campaign, said “after seven years as State Auditor and nearly 900 public town halls across Iowa, Iowans know Rob Sand as an independent watchdog who holds both parties accountable, protects taxpayer dollars, and fights to lower costs.”

“Zach Lahn has spent his entire campaign lying about Rob, and now he’s bringing in another D.C. insider to try to bail him out because he can’t answer for his frequent flights to Kansas or his decade-long career as a political operative,” Moher said. “The attacks Lahn has pushed have been repeatedly found false by independent fact-checkers and news outlets, and outsourcing his talking points to another Washington politician doesn’t make them true. Iowa voters know the leader who will actually show up and work for them is Rob Sand.”

Iowa Democrats said Vance’s event was a “desperate attempt to bail out Kansas carpetbagger and career political operative Zach Lahn.”

“Another insider D.C. politician is rushing in to prop up Zach Lahn because he has no answer for how he can be a full-time governor when he lives in Kansas,” IDP Chair Rita Hart said in a statement. “The truth is Lahn is a career political operative who wants to continue the worst of Kim Reynolds’ failed agenda for another four years, and his party bosses know he would be a reliable rubber stamp for the reckless tariffs and ongoing war in Iran that have sent the price of gas, utilities, and groceries skyrocketing. After years of underfunded public schools, farm bankruptcies, and record cancer growth rates, Iowans are ready for change, but Lahn is only offering more of the same.”

Vance last visited Iowa in May, when he spoke in support of U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn, the Republican running for reelection in Iowa’s 3^rd Congressional District.

Though his visits to Iowa have been focused on the midterms, trips to Iowa often signal interest in a future presidential bid. Vance has not announced a presidential run, but is considered likely to run as a GOP presidential candidate in 2028. A recent poll from YouGov/Bowling Green State University shows the vice president holding an early lead in the field compared to other potential candidates such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.