
While attending NCBA’s CattleCon, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, spoke with the Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Ethan Lane about working with the new Trump administration. Oklahoma Farm Report’s coverage of CattleCon is powered by Farm Data Services.
“This is such an unprecedented set of circumstances, for a president to be coming in who was just president four years ago,” Lane expressed. “He knew he wanted to run for president again and has had policy analysts and thinkers sitting on the sidelines for the last four years thinking about what this would look like in the first couple of weeks of the new administration. No president in modern history can say they had a chance to have a do-over.”
Lane acknowledged that President Trump is moving quickly, and his tariff policies are a major topic of discussion in the ag industry. The team at NCBA is pleased to have the screwworm issue at the Mexican border resolved which provides more certainty to the cattle markets.
“To have that attention from the new administration early on when we know they have a lot of other things going on is something that really speaks to the president’s commitment to rural America and we are very grateful for that,” Lane stated.
Although the leadership of Congress has changed, the same challenges remain. “They have thirty-some-odd days until government funding expires, so they need to get some kind of a deal put together,” Lane said. “Right now, I know they are working to get a budget resolution done so they can get into that budget reconciliation conversation. That is a really important piece of business for the House to deal with this year, not the least of which because of its utility in renewing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That is a big deal for our producers.”
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affects escalating land values, transitioning multigenerational operations and the impacts of the Death tax. All of those critical tax cuts expire at the end of 2025 and a resolution must be found.
“This is something that we are really going to be watching and participating in as much as we possibly can to ensure that process reaches a successful conclusion and that we secure an extension of those tax provisions into the next five years,” Lane averred. “This is not up for debate. It is critical for farmers. We have to get this done.”
The permanence of the tax provisions is still an ongoing discussion, but Lane says that it is still too early to speculate on the possibility. He noted the movement of focus toward eliminating waste in the federal government and enhancing its efficiency might be a path to that outcome.
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