A still-agitated Sen. Chuck Grassley spoke to AgriTalk Host Chip Flory on Monday, detailing a list of frustrations from the town hall meeting Grassley hosted last Friday night at the Franklin County Courthouse in Hampton, Iowa.
The event marked the kickoff for Grassley’s 45th annual tour to each of Iowa’s 99 counties, done so he could hear directly from Iowans.
He heard from them all right.
About 150 Iowans worried and upset about funding cuts and mass firings of federal employees, led by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, showed up and volleyed questions at the senior senator from Iowa.
In the overflow crowd were also a number of corn and soybean growers and county-based Republican party leaders Grassley and team had personally invited.
“A lot of them showed up. I’d have assumed I’d got a friendly question… And do you know that for a whole hour, not a single farmer or a single Republican leader asked me a single question,” the senator told Flory.
Instead, Grassley said he had to listen to “an hour of people complaining about President Donald Trump, Musk and Congress,” claiming the latter is not doing enough to provide a check on the president’s authority.
“Why wouldn’t they take an opportunity to ask Grassley something about international trade, or about the five-year farm bill or stuff like that?” Grassley asked Flory.
“I’ll ask you right now,” Flory responded. “Let’s talk about E15 and year-around availability. There’s a big push for it right now. Is that going to happen?”
“I think so, but I don’t know exactly when, because you’ve got to be bipartisan,” noted Grassley, who has long-championed year-round E15.
E15 Decision Requires Bipartisan Support
In mid-February, Grassley and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), both members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, had reintroduced the Nationwide Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act of 2025. The legislation is currently the only permanent, nationwide solution they said that will unleash the power of E15. The legislation would enable the year-round, nationwide sale of ethanol blends higher than 10 percent, helping to lower fuel prices and provide certainty in fuel markets for farmers and consumers.
“We’re hoping all those things get done, but we need permanency and predictability with ethanol and biodiesel,” Grassley told Flory. “And we need certainty, and this administration ought to give us that certainty.”
On his first day in office of his second term, President Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to explore the benefits of making E15 available year-round through his Executive Order Declaring a National Energy Emergency.
“We got plenty of leadership here in the Midwest, and all the president would have to do is say, ‘Well, why doesn’t Congress get off of its butt and get something passed to help and bring certainty to this very important industry, because we have the capability of feeding the world, and we have the capability of fueling the world,” Grassley said.
Trump Tariffs Are Concerning
Grassley has been very consistent over the years in his messages to American farmers and the public at large that he is not a proponent of using tariffs to negotiate trade decisions.
Flory asked Grassley what his take is on what’s currently happening on the trade front, and whether he anticipates any long-term gains resulting from implementing tariffs.
“I’m a free and fair trader. I want to negotiate tariffs down,” Grassley replied. “If the president’s plan works, I’m going to say, ‘Praise the Lord.’ And if it doesn’t work, I’m going to say, ‘I told you so.’ But I’m not telling him that yet.”
Grassley said while he’s been in the Senate, he has spent 40 years trying to eliminate or reduce tariffs. “If he (Trump) can do it in a better way, I’m going to honor him for doing it.”
Another trade-related issue Grassley brought up is the decision by the Trump administration to impose fees of up to $1.5 million on Chinese-built vessels entering U.S. ports as part of the administration’s efforts to revive the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
“I don’t know that the president understands what he’s doing,” Grassley said. “The president is just creating a problem every time a ship docks in the United States, putting up to a million-dollar-plus cost on it. It is going to make it much more difficult for us from a competitive standpoint. I don’t know if they really think this stuff through or not.”
Augusto Bassanini, president of the United Grain Corporation, said as much in a March 21 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Bassanini, quoted in an online article by the South China Morning Post, said the “unintended consequences” of the proposed actions “are already beginning to surface, with global shipping markets reacting by reducing bookings to U.S. ports, increasing shipping rates, and modifying contractual terms.”
Are More Tough Economic Times Ahead?
Flory asked Grassley if the various issues are signaling a prolonged period of tough economic times for agriculture. “Should we be anticipating some payments to farmers like, you know, the market facilitation program payments under the first Trump administration?” Flory asked.
“Well, already we got the $29 for soybeans and $42 for corn going out now to farmers. That was the $10 billion appropriation of the previous bill, but that deals with the Biden economics,” Grassley replied.
“The only thing I’ve got to tell you is when (Trump’s) tariffs screwed up our sale of soybeans to China, then he put $28 billion out through the CCC (USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation), which I think is too liberal of a delegation of authority to the president of the United States. But anyway, farmers want their money from the marketplace, not from the federal treasury,” Grassley added.
Flory’s final question to Grassley was regarding the timeline on tax cuts and budget reconciliation in the Senate.
Grassley said, “I hope today the chairman of the committee tells me he’s put together a bill. If he does that today, that will give us an opportunity to get something moving. Because until now, we’ve had 10 weeks of nothing but talk, talk, talk, going over the same thing week after week, and we got to move.”
The full discussion between Sen. Grassley and Flory on AgriTalk is available here.
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