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Exports are essential to our agriculture community and rural economy in Iowa. In 2021 alone, Iowa exported nearly $14.3 billion worth of agricultural goods, including $3.7 billion in soybeans, $3.1 billion in corn, $2.7 billion in pork, and $592 million in beef. However, every producer fears a foreign animal disease (FAD) outbreak that could devastate flocks and herds, preventing our farmers from selling their high-quality product on the global market.

Iowa and California are very different places — and that’s a good thing.

While California families pay upward of 13.3 percent in state income tax, Iowans enjoy substantially lower and fairer tax rates.

California boasts the most expensive real estate market in the nation, with an average home price of roughly $737,000. In Iowa, affordability is paramount. The average home price in our state is roughly $168,000.

Well over two years in, the Biden administration clearly is failing to represent US economic interests on the global stage. And perhaps the best example is how it’s handling the international tax negotiations at the OECD.

Over the course of Biden’s time in office, this administration has enacted billions of dollars of new taxes on American businesses and has proposed trillions more. At the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the administration found common cause with their international counterparts, all agreeing on higher taxes for American companies.

Thanks, in large part, to President Joe Biden’s tax-and-spend policies, the state of the American economy is bleak. Wasteful government spending fueled the worst inflation crisis in more than forty years, small business optimism has plummeted, interest rates on everything from home mortgages to car loans continue their devastating trajectory upwards, and the cost of farm inputs remains historically high. Left unresolved, these economic challenges will spell disaster for American prosperity, productivity, and competitiveness.

Agriculture is a capital-intensive industry. From buying fertilizer, seed, feed, and pesticides to purchasing new machinery, Iowa farmers and producers must maintain a tight budget to turn a profit and feed our country and the world.

Earlier this month, I led a letter joined by seven of my colleagues to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen raising our concerns about an extraterritorial tax Germany is imposing on American companies.

American fuel retailers, corn growers, ethanol producers, and our families face unnecessary uncertainty year after year awaiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s arbitrary, last-minute waivers to allow for the summertime sale of E-15 at gas stations nationwide. This unpredictability raises gas prices for American families, prevents fuel retailers from consistently marketing low-cost, low-carbon E-15, and threatens the livelihoods of corn growers and ethanol producers not only in Iowa, but across the Midwest.

President Biden’s economic agenda – which he has coined “Bidenomics” – has failed our families, farmers, small businesses, and rural communities by every measure possible. 61% of Americans reported living paycheck to paycheck, 71% of Americans have a negative view of the state of the economy, and gas prices continue their upward trajectory. Even more concerning, credit-car and car-loan delinquency rates are rising with American families now carrying a record one trillion dollars in credit-card debt.