The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 7 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Thanks to President Trump’s policies, a confluence of events is about to unfold that will absolutely clobber rural America. First, there’s Trump’s trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a bizarre rambling rant that indicated he’s absolutely fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned. Meanwhile, there are new indications that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered by these tariffs. On top of that, the House GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid are very likely to be a massive problem for rural hospitals. And big GOP cuts to food stamps will also inflict pain on rural areas. So is there an opening here for Democrats to win back some ground in these places? Today we’re talking about all this with Matt Hildreth, executive director of RuralOrganizing.org and a veteran Democratic operative in rural areas. Matt, great to have you on.

Matt Hildreth: Thank you for having me on the show. I’m a big fan.

Sargent: Thanks, Matt. Let’s start with what Trump said on Tuesday. He was talking about how he hasn’t yet made any deals with other countries to dial down tariffs. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Just to finish, we also have a situation because everyone says, When? When? When are you going to sign deals? We don’t have to sign deals. We can sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we want it. We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market. We’re going to sit down and we’re going to put very fair numbers down and we’re going to say, Here’s what this country [wants], what we want, and, Congratulations, we have a deal. And they’ll either say, Great, and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, Not good. We’re not going to do it. And I’ll say, That’s OK. You don’t have to shop.

Sargent: Matt, the quote that jumps out at me is, “We don’t care about their market.” Here he’s clearly saying, We may never make deals that will dial down the trade war. What do you think farmers who rely on exporting food to international markets are going to make of that?

Hildreth: Yeah, I think that that’s a really good point. When you talk to folks in small towns and rural communities, they’re paying attention to markets. That’s something that you learn when you’re a farmer and you study things like ag economics: It’s all about understanding the markets. And I think sometimes there’s a lot of stereotypes about farmers—that they’re just dumb hayseeds, simple people that sit on tractors all day. Farming is pretty sophisticated. Whether you’re a farm worker working out for the growers in the fields or you’re sitting in a combine, there’s a ton of science and there’s a ton of economics. It’s all economics.

And I actually think Donald Trump probably really doesn’t care about the markets. He’s more focused on his favorability. He’s more focused on his vengeance. But farmers absolutely care about their markets. It takes years to establish relationships in international markets for farmers, especially when it comes to farmers in the Midwest with corn and especially soybeans. Farmers have been dedicating tons and tons of time and resources to establishing those relationships. And many farmers are seeing those evaporate overnight.

Sargent: Well, The New York Times has a new piece confirming this, reporting that farmers in Iowa are already getting hammered economically and the local economies are slowing down. The Times reports on Monona County where Trump got 72 percent of the vote, quotes a farmer there saying the trade war is going to hit hard. A lot of this is due to China’s tariffs and retaliation against Trump’s tariffs. Matt, you spent a lot of time in rural America. Let’s talk about how important Chinese markets in particular are for farmers in the places that you organize.

Hildreth: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, RuralOrganizing.org started in Northwest Iowa in Steve King’s congressional district, so agriculture is something that we hear about all the time—and especially when it comes to soybeans. That’s something that I think people might not recognize if you’re not from a farm family: Soybeans are an absolutely critical component of many Iowa farms and have a big impact on rural economies. And so when you lose that foreign Chinese market with your soybeans, that’s a huge hit. I’ve heard things like one in three rows of soybeans is going to China. So when you think about all those rows of soybeans when you drive across........

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