$12B in relief to aid farmers hurt by tariffs
Trump team’s plan scorned by some GOP lawmakers
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration announced Tuesday that it will provide $12 billion in emergency relief to ease the pain of American farmers slammed by escalating trade disputes with China and other countries.
However, some farm-state Republicans quickly dismissed the plan, declaring that farmers want markets for their crops, not payoffs for lost sales and lower prices.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said it would tap an existing program to provide billions in direct payments to farmers and ranchers hurt by foreign retaliation to Trump’s tariffs.
The administration said the relief effort is only temporary.
Agriculture officials said they would not need congressional approval and that the money would go through the Commodity Credit Corp., a wing of the department that addresses agricultural prices.
The officials said payments can’t be calculated until after the harvests. Brad Karmen, the USDA’s assistant deputy administrator for farm programs, noted that the wheat harvest is already in, so wheat farmers could get payments sooner than other growers.
Soybeans are likely to be the largest sector affected by the programs. Soybean prices have plunged 18 percent in the past two months.
“This is a short-term solution that will give President Trump and his administration the time to work on long-term trade deals,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said as administration officials argued that the plan was not a “bailout” of the nation’s farmers.
But that provided little solace to rank-and-file Republicans, who said the tariffs are simply taxes and warned that the administration’s action would open a Pandora’s box for other sectors of the economy.
“I want to know what we’re going to say to the automobile manufacturers and the petrochemical manufacturers and all the other people who are being hurt by tariffs,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “You’ve got to treat everybody the same.”
“This trade war is cutting the legs out from under farmers and White House’s ‘plan’ is to spend $12 billion on gold crutches,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a news release. “America’s farmers don’t want to be paid to lose — they want to win by feeding the world. This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”
The effort is expected to start taking effect around Labor Day. Officials said the direct payments could help producers of soybeans, which have been hit hard by retaliation to the tariffs, along with sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton and dairy. It also could help hog farmers.
The food purchased from farmers would include some types of fruits, nuts, rice, legumes, dairy products, beef and pork, officials said.
Trump did not specifically mention the plan during a speech to veterans in Kansas City, Mo., but he asked for patience as he attempts to renegotiate trade agreements that he said have hurt American workers.
“We’re making tremendous progress. They’re all coming. They don’t want to have those tariffs put on them,” Trump said at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention. “We’re opening up markets. You watch what’s going to happen. Just be a little patient.”
Trump mocked the agriculture industry’s extensive efforts to persuade him to change course. “They have some of the greatest lobbying teams ever put together,” he said. Ultimately, Trump argued, farmers “will be the biggest beneficiary” of his policies.
Trump in a tweet earlier Tuesday declared that “Tariffs are the greatest!” and threatened to impose additional penalties on U.S. trading partners as he prepares for negotiations with European officials at the White House.
Tariffs are taxes on imports. They are meant to protect domestic businesses and put foreign competitors at a disadvantage. But the taxes also exact a toll on U.S. businesses and consumers, which pay more for imported products.
The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese goods in a dispute over Beijing’s hightech industrial policies. China has retaliated with duties on soybeans and pork, affecting Midwest farmers in a region of the country that supported the president in his 2016 campaign.
Trump has threatened to place penalties on up to $500 billion in products imported from China, a move that would ratchet up the stakes in the trade dispute involving the world’s biggest economies.
The moves have been unsettling to lawmakers with districts dependent upon manufacturers and farmers who are affected by the retaliatory tariffs.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said the administration’s proposal was raised a month ago when senators visited the White House for a broad discussion on trade. He said the lawmakers told the president “that our farmers want markets, and not really a payment from government. And he said, ‘I’m surprised, I’ve never heard of anybody who didn’t want a payment from government.’”
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said the administration “finally seems to understand that the Trump-Pence tariffs are hurting the American people,” referring to Vice President Mike Pence.
“These tariffs are a massive tax increase on American consumers and businesses, and instead of offering welfare to farmers to solve a problem they themselves created, the administration should reverse course and end this incoherent policy,” Corker said.
Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, whose family operates a farm in the eastern part of the state, said the administration’s move was “encouraging for the short term” but that farmers needed “markets and opportunity, not government handouts.”
The Agriculture Department predicted before the trade fights that U.S. farm income would drop this year to $60 billion, or half the $120 billion of five years ago.
Mark Martinson, who raises crops and cattle in north-central North Dakota and is president of the U.S. Durum Growers Association, said the $12 billion figure “sounds huge” but that there are many farmers in need.
“I don’t think this will cover us for a very long time — and it might not even buy me a tank of diesel. I think it will only put out the fire a little bit,” he said.
Perdue said last week that some kind of mitigation was only appropriate when farmers are “disrupted by trade actions that they had nothing to do with.”
“They are some of the best patriots in America,” Perdue said last week at a forum hosted by the Axios news website, admitting that Trump had made his job “more challenging” of late.
“But they can’t pay the bills with patriotism,” he said of the farmers.
The imposition of tariffs on imported goods has been a favored tactic by Trump, but it has prompted U.S. partners to retaliate, creating risks for the economy.
The president is meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker today. The U.S. and its European allies are meeting as the dispute threatens to spread to automobile production.
Trump has placed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, saying they pose a threat to U.S. national security, an argument that allies such as the European Union and Canada reject. He has also threatened to slap tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts, potentially targeting imports that last year totaled $335 billion.
Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas, Paul Wiseman, Lisa Mascaro, Jill Colvin, Kevin Freking, Matthew Daly and James MacPherson of The Associated Press; by Philip Rucker of The
Washington Post; and by Tom Benning of The Dallas Morning News.
“America’s farmers don’t want to be paid to lose — they want to win by feeding the world. This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.” — Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.