The Trump administration is set today to announce a plan for providing billions in aid to farmers to help shield them from the impact of a trade war in which agriculture is a main target for retaliation against U.S. tariffs, Bloomberg reports.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has been promising an aid package for months, and department officials have said farmers may get assistance through government purchases of commodities using a Depression-era program. Administration officials and lawmakers have also discussed stepped-up trade promotion measures as a way to help farmers.
The supports would be a balm to producers throughout the U.S. who are seeing prices drop and inventories rise because of disputes with China, Canada and other trade partners who are significant purchasers of U.S. pork, soybeans and other crops.
While emergency government commodity buys are rare, they’re not unheard of. President Barack Obama allocated $170 million to help farmers struck by drought in 2012, though the current USDA program is expected to be much larger.
Farmers are a key interest group in the rural political base that elected President Donald Trump, who has promised them they will emerge from a trade war better off.
Many farmers are accepting that message. Still, Bloomberg notes, an extended trade dispute that lingers into the fall harvest holds the potential to shake that support. Trump also has been under pressure from farm state lawmakers to back away from imposing tariffs.
The announcement of the plan on Tuesday would give the president a talking point when he travels Thursday to Iowa, the top U.S. soybean-producing state and the home state of Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who’s been critical of Trump’s moves on trade. Perdue said last week that the aid plan wouldn’t be ready until the first week of September.
