HAYTI, Mo. – Congressman Jason Smith (MO-08) held a Farmers Town Hall with cotton producers in Hayti, where he discussed the impact of the Working Families Tax Cuts on Missouri’s cotton industry and heard directly from growers about the challenges facing the Bootheel’s cotton economy.

Congressman Smith said, “Cotton has been part of the fabric of the Bootheel for generations, and the growers I sat down with this week are up against a lot — foreign competition that’s been hollowing out our textile industry for decades, crop insurance fraud that punishes the farmers playing by the rules, and a shrinking number of gins that makes it harder just to get cotton to market.

“When I wrote the Working Families Tax Cuts, I fought to make sure cotton growers struggling in the current agriculture economy weren’t an afterthought. We raised the reference price for cotton by 14 percent and made permanent the small business deduction and 100 percent immediate expensing that let these family operations reinvest in their equipment and land. There’s more work to be done to support our cotton farmers, and I’ll keep fighting for solutions on infrastructure, insurance integrity, and fair trade, because Missouri cotton deserves a level playing field.”

During the discussion, growers raised concerns about competition from Brazil, which has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest cotton exporter, as well as the decades-long decline of the domestic textile industry as manufacturing has shifted to China. Producers also flagged the toll of crop insurance fraud on honest farmers and the shrinking number of cotton gins in the Bootheel, which has fallen from 32 to 16 in recent years, driving up the cost and making it more difficult to get cotton processed and to market.

Missouri consistently ranks among the top 10 cotton-producing states, with production concentrated almost entirely in the Bootheel, where the crop remains a major economic driver for Pemiscot, Dunklin, New Madrid, Stoddard, Scott, and Mississippi Counties. The Working Families Tax Cuts, which Congressman Smith authored, increased the reference price for cotton by 14 percent beginning with crop year 2025 as part of a $56 billion investment in farm safety net programs — the first meaningful update to Title I commodity support in more than two decades. With cotton farms overwhelmingly organized as pass-through businesses, the law’s permanent 199A small business deduction and 100 percent immediate expensing give growers the ability to reinvest in equipment and land without losing a share of that investment to Washington. Congressman Smith also secured $6 billion in new crop insurance funding, including increased resources for oversight and compliance, to help crack down on the fraud that honest producers are calling out.

On trade, Congressman Smith pointed to recent Agreements on Reciprocal Trade (ARTs) with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Bangladesh, which reward the use of American cotton in textile and apparel manufacturing, as a step toward rebuilding demand for U.S.-grown cotton lost to foreign competition.