Trump to add $16B to farm aid
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is delivering an additional $16 billion in aid to farmers hurt by his trade policies, an effort to relieve economic pain among his supporters in rural America and another sign that the U.S.-China trade war likely won’t end soon.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the first of three payments is likely to be made in July or August. He suggested that it was unlikely that a trade deal would be done by then, a sign that U.S. negotiators could be months away from settling a trade dispute with China.
“The package we’re announcing today ensures that farmers do not bear the brunt of unfair retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other trading partners,” Perdue said.
The latest bailout comes atop $12 billion in aid Trump provided farmers last year.
Trump, seeking to reduce America’s trade deficit with the rest of the world and with China in particular, has imposed import taxes on foreign steel, aluminum, solar panels and dishwashers and on thousands of Chinese products.
U.S. trading partners have lashed back with retaliatory tariffs of their own, focusing on U.S. agricultural products in a direct shot at the American heartland, where support for Trump runs high.
William Reinsch, a trade analyst at the Center for Strategic and Inamounts ternational Studies and a former U.S. trade official, called the administration’s aid package for farmers “a fairly overt political ploy.”
“It’s not economics,” Reinsch said. Trump wants to win the farm states again in the 2020 election, “and he’s got members of Congress beating up on him” to resolve the trade conflicts.
Talks between the world’s two biggest economies broke off this month with no resolution to a dispute over Beijing’s aggressive efforts to challenge U.S. technological dominance. The U.S. charges that China is stealing technology, unfairly subsidizing its own companies and forcing U.S. companies to hand over trade secrets if they want access to the Chinese market.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss the standoff at a meeting of the Group of 20 major economies in Osaka, Japan, next month. There are no plans for talks to occur before then.
Briefing reporters on the farm aid package, Perdue said he doubted that “a trade deal could be consummated before” the first payments to farmers in July or August.
The second payment will be made around November and the third likely early next year, Agriculture Department officials said, unless a trade deal has been reached by then.
The direct payments will make up $14.5 billion of the $16 billion package and will be handed out on a county-by-county basis. The will be determined by how much each county has suffered from the retaliatory duties imposed by China, as well as previous tariffs put in place by the European Union and Turkey.
The rest of the package comprises $1.4 billion to purchase surplus food commodities from farmers and distribute them to U.S. schools and food banks and $100 million to help develop new export markets overseas.
The payments will go to farmers producing roughly two dozen crops, including soybeans, corn, canola, peanuts, cotton and wheat. Dairy and hog farmers are also eligible.
U.S. soybean exports to China have been hit particularly hard, falling from $12.3 billion in 2017 to just $3.2 billion last year.