Last time Reynolds met with Trump, Iowa lost out “big league.”
Today, Governor Kim Reynolds announced that she would be joining a meeting with President Trump and governors concerned about his destabilizing trade war.
“Governor Reynolds has acknowledged that these tariffs will hurt our state, but she has yet to produce any results that will actually help rural communities weather this disaster. Rural communities are already suffering in Iowa, and that has only been made worse by her the self-inflicted budget crisis. It is long past to me she finally stand up for rural Iowa and produce real results. Her success in this meeting with the President will be measured by the tangible solutions she can get from the White House, but from looking at her record, Iowans should be skeptical that any progress will be made,” said Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price.
Unfortunately for Iowans, Governor Reynolds does not have a good record of bringing back results for our state. Last time she met with Trump, she failed to effectively advocate for Iowa interests on multiple fronts, and, as a result, Iowa lost out “big league.”
Renewable Fuels
In June 2017, Reynolds met with Trump about energy issues, which presumably meant the ethanol and wind energy sectors so central to Iowa’s economy. However, when Trump’s EPA released their first Renewable Fuel Standard proposal, the biodiesel number fell more than 600 million below the industry’s request.
At the time, even Governor Reynolds admitted that she was “disappointed” that biodiesel numbers weren’t higher.
Health Care
Reynolds also said she would use the June meeting to speak to President Trump about a stopgap proposal to keep costs low for Iowans in the health care exchanges. In August, the Washington Post reported that Trump personally called and killed the proposal.
Her failure to get Iowa’s exception plan approved resulted in 72,000 Iowans facing a 57% premium increase in 2018.