Biden State of the Union to Define US Values at Home, Abroad

President Joe Biden comes to his first State of the Union address Tuesday night with tough words for his autocratic adversaries and a balm for his beleaguered population, battered by a grueling pandemic, rising prices and bitter political divides.

The escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the tireless pandemic and as always, the economy, are likely to dominate Biden’s first run at this constitutionally mandated address. He had previously addressed a joint session of Congress, but this is his first State of the Union speech.

The White House says he plans to mince no words against belligerent leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last week ordered an invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

“Throughout our history, we’ve learned this lesson — when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” reads an excerpt provided by the White House Tuesday evening. “They keep moving. And the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising.”

The evolving crisis in Ukraine has overshadowed much of the speech preparations, with Biden being compelled to deliver three speeches on the U.S. reaction to the conflict. The U.S. and NATO allies have leveled several rounds of bruising sanctions at Russia and at Putin personally, but he remains undeterred.

The White House also announced that Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, will join first lady Jill Biden in her viewing box. Earlier this week, the first lady wore a face mask bearing the image of a sunflower, Ukraine’s national flower.

In the past week, Biden has repeatedly addressed the escalating crisis in Ukraine. But in his own deeply politically divided nation, he has been met with a frosty reception when talking about what he describes as the greatest threat to global security since World War II.

Biden’s fiercest American critics have also spared no words in lobbing critiques at him, with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday saying that “there should be no war waging now in Ukraine, and it is terrible for humanity that Biden, NATO and the West have failed so terribly in allowing it to start.”

Biden’s speech will be followed by the Republican Party’s response, delivered by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.

‘Building a better America’

On the economy, administration officials say Biden will focus on four steps he plans to take: increasing manufacturing in the U.S. and strengthening supply chains; working to bring down prices of goods; promoting fair competition in order to protect small businesses; and eliminating barriers to well-paying jobs.

In the White House preview of the speech, Biden shares his economic vision for the country.

“I have a better plan to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages. Make more cars and semiconductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America. More goods moving faster and cheaper in America. More jobs where you can earn a good living in America. And instead of relying on foreign supply chains — let’s make it in America. Economists call it ‘increasing the productive capacity of our economy.’ I call it building a better America.”

This speech is usually a showcase for some pomp and reflection on what it means to be American. This year is no different. The first lady will be joined in her box by eight guests who the White House says were selected “because they represent policies or themes to be addressed by the president in his speech.”

They include Americans who represent union labor, parents attending college, the health care workforce, technological innovators, military families, Indigenous Americans, and the future of America.

The youngest among them is 13-year-old Joshua Davis of Midlothian, Virginia, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a baby. At the age 4, he advocated for the Virginia General Assembly to pass a bill making school safer for children with Type 1 diabetes.

Think US Home Values Are Soaring? Talk to a Farmer

Fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer Jeff Frank doesn’t feel rich, but simply based on the skyrocketing value of his land in northwest Iowa, it’s an apt way to describe him, even if he laughs at the idea.

He lives in the same nearly century-old house, grows veggies in the family garden and shops at the same grocery store about 15 miles (24 kilometers) down the road. “We live the same way we have all of our lives,” he said.

Still, even if Frank’s life hasn’t changed, the several hundred acres he owns about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Des Moines have suddenly made him worth millions of dollars.

It may come as a surprise to city dwellers excited by their home values that countless farmers like Frank are actually experiencing a real estate boom that makes residential prices pale in comparison. While median existing-home prices rose by 15.8% in the U.S. last year, farmland values went up about double that rate in places like Iowa.

“I’m definitely surprised by the magnitude,” said Wendong Zhang, an economist at Iowa State University who oversees an annual farmland value survey.

The rising values, especially in the Midwest, are due to high prices being paid for the key commodity crops of corn and soybeans, plentiful harvests in recent years coupled with low interest rates and optimism the good times will continue.

But they’re a mixed blessing. They’re enriching farmers who already have a lot of land, but making it much harder for small operators or younger farmers starting out to get land unless they happen to inherit it.

Most purchases are by operations that see the value of larger scale, seizing the chance to buy nearby land.

“If you miss this opportunity, you may not get another chance,” Zhang said, describing the current mood.

As for consumers, higher land costs typically don’t affect grocery prices.

Historically, farmland values rise and fall, but in the past couple decades they have mostly risen, and in the past year they have risen a lot — 33% in Frank’s part of the state and 29% throughout Iowa, one of the nation’s top agricultural states. Agricultural prices also have soared elsewhere in the Midwest and have climbed in most other parts of the country, too.

Federal Reserve Banks in Chicago and Kansas City reported double-digit increases in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska.

In Iowa, average farmland has risen from $7,559 an acre in 2020 to $9,751 an acre in 2021.

Nationally, farmland was up an average of 7% but that doesn’t include the last half of 2021, when prices really took off in many areas.

Farmland prices have even climbed in California despite concerns about persistent drought. In 2021, the average prices of $10,900 an acre was up 9% from 2020.

The land purchases augment an existing national trend of more agricultural production coming from ever-larger farms.

Dan Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California-Davis, credits some of the rising value in switching to higher-value crops, such as replacing alfalfa with nut trees.

Overall, though, Sumner said farmers are feeling good about their future.

“It reflects confidence in the economics of agriculture,” he said.

The upswing follows tumultuous years of trade wars, market breakdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic and drought in much of the West.

For individual farmers, the biggest benefit of rising values is that they can borrow money at better rates for annual needs like seed and fertilizer and longer-term investments like tractors and even more land.

The high prices have prompted plenty of people to buy and sell land, leading to a record of $765 million in agricultural land sales last year overseen by Farmers National Company, one of the nation’s largest landowner services companies.

Randy Dickhut, a Farmers National real estate broker in Omaha, Nebraska, said a more typical year would see about $500 million in sales.

“It’s been very busy,” Dickhut said. “It’s certainly easy to sell.”

But Holly Rippon-Butler, who runs a dairy with her parents in upstate New York, called the farmland prices increases “just nuts.”

“The hard reality is, buying land is almost impossible unless you have some preexisting source of generational family wealth,” said Rippon-Butler, who works with the National Young Farmers Coalition, an organization the among other priorities advocates for policy changes and public funding that would enable more people to have access to land.

Given high land prices, Rippon-Butler said beginning farmers she encounters typically work as little as a quarter-acre of land and see 20 acres as a relatively large operation. Many farmers also rent land, and as values rise, so do rental rates.

Frank, the farmer in northwest Iowa, said that even though he’s technically wealthier now, it hard for him to expand his holdings as he prepares to pass along the property to the next generation.

“I have a son who farms with me and of course he’d like to expand but buying farmland right now is a big undertaking,” he said. “Even for a small farm you’re talking about millions of dollars.”