Ralph “Rass” Caldwell is quick to say he has strong opinions on just about every subject. The policy decisions of President Trump during his first 100 days are no exception.
Caldwell, who owns Caldwell Family Farm in Turner, has been a farmer all his life and has been frustrated over the years by environmental restrictions placed on his farmland, so he supports Trump’s rollback of some of the Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
“They steal some more of my land every year,” he says, explaining that he is required to build fences and setbacks from vernal pools and brooks and to create a buffer zone in an area of his farm because it is home to a certain species of bats.
He says he understands the need for some environmental regulations but feels that manufacturing industries need more oversight than farms.
He fully supports Trump’s policies on immigration, saying that government money used to support immigrants could be used elsewhere, such as fixing roads and bridges. Caldwell favors the idea of building a border wall to inhibit illegal immigration.
“We have to get a handle on who’s coming to our country,” he says. “They have to come in the front door, not the back door.”
He also favors pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal but wants Trump to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, not scrap it.
“I would trade with Canada and with Mexico, and I wouldn’t trade with another damn soul,” he says. “If we can’t raise it or manufacture it or get it between the Arctic Circle and southern Mexico, we don’t need it.”
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