Rural policy priorities are starting to emerge from the presidential campaigns—with different outlooks on what matters

With the major-party nominations for vice president featuring two candidates with authentic rural roots, prospects seemed promising for a policy debate during the campaign about the role that the federal government can play in helping rural America prosper. Yet neither of the moderators during the vice-presidential debate on October 1 even uttered the word “rural,” and despite the forum’s much-praised focus on substance, none of it touched specifically on rural policy.

That was a missed opportunity, as there seem to be real differences between how the two possible presidential administrations would approach ensuring investment, opportunity, and economic security reach rural America. A large majority of rural residents believe their communities receive less than their fair share of federal resources (a perception with which their urban and suburban counterparts largely agree). While the media mostly fixates on the tactics of winning over rural voters—messaging, outreach, and getting out the vote—they deserve a better sense of how the candidates view the options for a federal role in generating and supporting rural prosperity.

Harris-Walz campaign

For their part, the Harris-Walz ticket recently put forward a Plan for Rural Communities. The plan reiterates some general policy priorities already put forward by the campaign, such as its goal of building 3 million new homes, with the presumption that the effects will ripple into rural areas. But it does include several rural-specific policy proposals.

First among them is a focus on improving access to rural health care. Priorities include protecting rural hospitals and pharmacies, cutting ambulance deserts in half, extending pandemic-era Medicare policies for telehealth, and recruiting 10,000 health care professionals to rural places through a mix of scholarships, loan forgiveness, and a new grant program to train and fund rural community health workers.

This proposal neatly fits into Harris’s focus on the care economy, a central pillar of her domestic policy agenda. But it also seeks to address issues in a key rural sector: The health care economy has become one of the largest segments of rural employment even as health care access in rural areas has declined significantly.

One-hundred ninety-four rural hospitals have closed since 2005, and workforce shortages are exacerbated by talent pipeline challenges: A recent study found a 28% drop in rural students attending medical school over a 15-year period, a cause for alarm since rural students are 10 times more likely to prefer working in rural areas.

In agriculture, there is a focus on supporting beginning farmers and ranchers with access to credit and technical assistance, as well as a pledge to help smaller-scale farmers and processors compete with larger interests through anti-trust enforcement and other means.

The Harris-Walz plan also spotlights the need to expand and support local capacity to access and deploy investment. It pledges to expand the Rural Partners Network, a pilot program launched by the Biden administration in 10 states that places federal staff in rural communities to help them identify opportunities for federal funding. The plan also throws its support behind bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senators Casey (D-PA) and Fischer (R-NE) to offer flexible funds to local rural governments and nonprofits for the staffing, expertise, coordination, and planning they need to secure public and private investment for new projects and economic development.

The implication is that these two programs could help more communities secure and manage the $464 billion worth of opportunities that have disproportionate relevance for rural community and economic development in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the CHIPs and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by the previous Congress.  

The extent to which rural stakeholders will be able to access and take full advantage of those opportunities remains uncertain. Since the planned distribution of those resources will extend well into the next decade, a new Harris-Walz administration will need to build out and sustain high-quality, robust measures—whether or not Congress follows through on the proposals under consideration—to ensure such investments reach and bear full fruit in rural places, recognizing their unique constraints.

Trump-Vance campaign

While the Trump-Vance campaign has not released a rural plan per se, the past couple of weeks also saw Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. publicly suggesting that the former president has pledged support for his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign and hinting at major changes in U.S. agriculture and health policy.

A key objective of the MAHA agenda focuses on reducing the prevalence of highly processed foods as well as obesity. To achieve this, RFK Jr. has suggested reforming agriculture subsidies to large-scale producers, which cheapen the crops often found in processed foods; that could mean cutting back on subsidies or shifting to different crops, such as fruits (or both). He has also been adamant about elevating support for regenerative agriculture and smaller-scale family farms.

The Obama and Biden administrations shared somewhat analogous aspirations in reorienting the food system, and RFK Jr.’s pledge to give “smaller operators a break” is not dissimilar from the Harris-Walz rhetoric, but it would constitute a reversal from the previous Trump administration, whose regulatory decisions were accused of favoring large agribusiness, reflecting what then-Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue held up as “the big get bigger and the small go out.”

Aid to farmers reached historic highs during that administration as it sought to mitigate the impact of its trade war with China. One analysis, by the Environmental Working Group, suggests that the largest 10% of producers received over half of that relief.

While there are questions about the strength of former president Trump’s commitment to the MAHA agenda, he appears, based on his media interviews and campaign speeches, very likely to continue the use of tariffs as a major policy tool. If he once again increases aid to farmers to compensate, the resilience of many local farming economies may depend upon the extent to which he targets and ensures that support reaches smaller-scale and family farms.

The previous Trump administration proposed a reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that included dissolving its Rural Development mission area (USDA-RD) and making significant cuts to the division’s programs that finance rural infrastructure, housing, and small businesses. Congress denied the bulk of those proposals and kept USDA-RD intact. Trump has now pledged to roll back unspent IRA funds, and some Congressional allies and the conservative Project 2025 suggest eliminating the Economic Development Administration (EDA), an office responsible for key new place-based programs.

The programs that intersect with rural interests in IIJA, CHIPs, and IRA have been over-subscribed—EDA’s new Recompete pilot program received 585 applications, the most ever for a national competition in the agency’s history—and there is evidence that rural places are disproportionately benefiting from both the public and private investment by the IRA. If as-yet-unallocated funds are rescinded, rural communities will be interested in other options a new Trump administration might offer to enable the investment they seem eager to attract.

Perhaps the biggest unknown is how a new Trump administration’s immigration policies would impact rural communities. Many of the most acute labor shortages in the country are occurring in rural-dominated states, and rural economies as diverse as agriculture, manufacturing, and health care are already relying upon significant proportions of foreign-born workers. Holding aside the complex logistical, legal, and ethical considerations, a new administration will need to consider how implementation avoids putting local rural economies at risk.

As important as federal policy has historically been for rural prosperity—the Rural Electrification Act is often heralded as one of our most successful national policies—rural residents have lost trust that policymakers have their best interests at heart. Proposals from the two presidential campaigns seek to respond to the challenges as well as the skepticism. Given the differences in emphasis and approach, the election outcome could have very different consequences for federal policy and its role in the future of rural communities.