Trump already weighing multi-billion-dollar tariff bailout for US farmers
‘With today's actions, we're also standing up for our great farmers and ranchers who are brutalized by nations all over the world,’ Trump said, after telling farmers last month to ‘have fun’ selling to Americans
The Trump administration is already considering bailing out farmers caught in the middle of the White House’s escalating trade war that’s now encompassing the rest of the world.
The administration is weighing a new batch of emergency aid to farmers as trading partners push back against U.S. tariffs with their own measures, The New York Times has reported. The last time Trump was in office, his administration spent $23 billion in subsidy payments to farmers to protect them from his trade war then with China, which purchased far fewer American agricultural products.
Such payments, as they did then, would now shield a vital voting base for Republicans.
Trump also announced that trading partners such as China, Japan, and Europe will face tariffs two to three times higher as the last time he was in office, and are far more widespread. That means aid to farmers may cost much more this time around. In addition, the possible retaliatory measures from trading partners may lead to more extreme, and longer-lasting, consequences.
Trump’s new tariffs are expected to hit farmers particularly hard as China has already retaliated with levies on corn, wheat, chicken, and cotton. The European Union, meanwhile, has put together a long list of agricultural and consumer products that it may target. Foreign nations are a massive market for American farm products.
The president of the Corn Board of the National Corn Growers Association, Illinois farmer Kenneth Hartman, told The Times that there are concerns about a long trade war leading to U.S. producers losing market share to competitors abroad.
USDA economists estimate that Trump’s last tariff policies, beginning in 2018, led to a $27 billion loss of agricultural exports. Large parts of those losses came as part of the trade war with China. Some market relationships were permanently altered.