Mike Pompeo heads to Iowa, a battleground in the China trade war

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is leading a high-profile delegation of American diplomats — to Iowa.

“We get visited every other day by someone who wants to run for president of the United States,” Craig Robinson, a political consultant and editor of The Iowa Republican, told the Washington Examiner. “I can't remember remember anytime when a sitting secretary of state visited Iowa for [an official] government-type visit.”

It’s a familiar trek for ambitious politicians, but Pompeo’s team stresses that he will spend Sunday and Monday in Des Moines advancing legitimate policy priorities. The Hawkeye State is a battleground in President Trump’s trade war with China, as Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs are designed to fall on the Iowa farmers whose opinions carry extra weight in U.S. politics. Pompeo’s public mission has clear political implications as the Democratic presidential primaries begin to heat up.

“[The secretary will] discuss how the American agriculture industry’s embrace of free enterprise and innovation helps bring prosperity to the American people and high-quality American products to the world,” State Department deputy spokesman Robert Pallodino said Friday when announcing the trip. “He also will discuss how the State Department serves American economic interests through the promotion of American exports.”

Pompeo was elected four times from 2010 to 2018 to serve as a congressman from Kansas, another state with a heavyweight agricultural industry, and took to his home-state airwaves to mount a defense of Trump’s imposition of tariffs on China for Kansans who are losing money due to the retaliatory tariffs. Some political observers wondered if such outreach to Kansans stemmed from his interest in running to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in 2020, but Pompeo ruled out a bid for the seat in February.

Pompeo will meet with Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, Ambassador Terry Branstad’s former lieutenant, speak with local high school students, tour a leading corporate agriscience research center, and speak to other "farmers and agriculture leaders,” the State Department announced. Pompeo will be accompanied by Branstad, a beloved former governor of Iowa who left his office in Des Moines to serve as the top diplomat in Beijing under President Trump. Branstad will bring some cachet in a state hit hard by the trade war.

Those meetings fit into Pompeo’s goals of defending Trump's trade policy and improving morale in the diplomatic corps by touting the State Department to American students. They could also help Trump protect his approval ratings in a state that he carried with barely 51 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential elections.

“I do think maybe they're tending the store,” Robinson said of the visit. “It calms the fears down because you do have Democrats in the state, left and right now, talking about how bad Trump's trade policies are for Iowa farmers, so, I think this is to combat that and to help make sure that he keeps that rural support he's enjoyed in the state.”

The secretary hopes his visit will reassure Iowans that “that this is going to all work out in the long run,” a source close to Pompeo told the Washington Examiner, on condition of anonymity. His team has not forgotten the restrictions imposed by the Hatch Act, a federal law that bans him from “engaging in partisan political management or partisan political campaigns,” but they believe that China’s controversial attempts to influence public opinion places the trip squarely within his official duties.

“It is not a partisan political issue to explain the policy of how we are going to get to a better trade balance between China and the United States,” the source close to Pompeo said. “He's not going out there to say 'Re-elect Donald Trump.’ He's going out there to explain that the policy of this administration is geared toward better trade deals. So, I don't think he's even getting close to the line on the Hatch Act.”

If the trip to Iowa offers indirect political dividends for a presidential campaign, though, that payoff might not stop with Trump. Pompeo, accompanied by two popular local politicians, will have a pleasant introduction to the Iowa voters — even if most Republicans have put their presidential aspirations on hold until 2024.

“I think you can serve two masters here,” Robinson said. “It’ll give him Iowa exposure, and he'll meet people, and that's never a bad thing.”