The first Trump administration issued a similar aid program to farmers after exports plummeted during the previous trade war with Beijing.
President Donald Trump said on Sept. 25 that he would use tariff revenue to provide aid to American farmers until his import levies start to benefit them, which Trump says is only a matter of time.
“We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers who are, for a little while, going to be hurt until … the tariffs kick in to their benefit,” Trump said from the White House on Thursday. “We’re going to make sure that our farmers are in great shape, because we’re taking in a lot of money.”
Trump added that “ultimately, the farmers are going to be making a fortune. But it’s a process—it has to kick in.”
The American farm economy is struggling this year from low crop prices and trade wars with Beijing, especially as China has stopped buying soybeans from the United States.
China—the world’s biggest purchaser of soybeans—is now buying the crop from South America while negotiations over tariffs with the United States continue.
Last week, Republican lawmakers warned that American farmers are in dire straits this year and urged the Trump administration to take a similar approach to what it did during the president’s first term, when the federal government issued a $23 billion bailout to farmers to blunt the impact from Trump’s previous trade war with China.
Trump’s retaliatory tariffs during his first term resulted in a $27 billion loss in U.S. agricultural exports from mid-2018 to the end of 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Soybeans accounted for nearly 71 percent of those losses, upward of $9.7 billion annually.
The CATO Institute noted that while some U.S. soybean exports to China recovered after both nations reached an agreement in 2020, “American farmers’ share of the Chinese market has not recovered to pre-trade war level” because of Beijing turning to Brazil and other nations for soybeans.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said that the Trump administration is considering an aid program similar to the bailout given to farmers during Trump’s first term.
On Thursday, Trump touted his tariffs, saying, “We’re making more money than we ever have made.”
By Jacob Burg
