General Discussion

That gravy train of federal subsidies to farmers is already rolling again, even before the majority of Trump's promised tariffs hit. The Department of Agriculture announced earlier this month that it will distribute $10 billion in "emergency" income subsidies funded by the spending bill Congress approved in December.

That's likely to be "a drop in the bucket" of what taxpayers will eventually spend if a major trade war begins, warns Taxpayers for Common Sense. "If a new regime of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs goes into effect, the question isn't whether economic pain can be expected, but how much pain, for how long, and to what end?"

There should be no taxpayer-funded bailouts for American farmers who get burned by Trump's trade wars. If the White House is concerned about the consequences that higher tariffs will have on American agriculture, there is an easy solution: Don't impose them.

https://reason.com/2025/03/25/dont-bail-out-farmers-again/


...and why did most of them vote for a trade war?

During President Donald Trump’s first term, farmers received $24 billion on top of their regular farm subsidies to compensate for the loss of access to foreign markets resulting from Trump’s trade war, such as China’s 25 percent retaliatory tariff on American soybeans. Then, in 2024, even as candidate Trump promised a more aggressive trade war that could cripple the farm economy, rural voters nonetheless preferred Trump to Kamala Harris by a 30-point margin. Trump earned a staggering 78 percent of the vote in the 444 counties most heavily dependent on farming.

In short, farm country voted overwhelmingly to unleash a new trade war. And now these same farmers and their political leaders want taxpayers to finance another round of bailouts to protect them from the consequences of their own votes. Congress already approved $10 billion in “emergency” payments to farmers during President Joe Biden’s final days, and now Trump has reportedly told Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to “have some programs in place that would potentially mitigate any economic catastrophes that could happen.” Congress and the farm organizations are already discussing how to structure such a taxpayer bailout.

Another farm bailout should infuriate taxpayers. Consumers and businesses who paid $16 billion in tariff costs last month are not receiving any federal taxpayer bailouts. Other American export industries that will suffer from a prolonged trade war—such as software, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and energy—are not receiving any broad-based federal bailouts (just those lobbyist-negotiated individual carve-outs). Yet farmers—who actively endured an earlier Trump trade war and then provided overwhelming vote margins to return Trump to the White House to unleash an even more destructive trade war—are now set to receive special taxpayer protection from the consequences of their own votes.

What happened to the Republican belief in individual accountability? Republicans love to lecture low-income voters that poverty is a moral failing, and they argue that shielding poor families from the consequences of their poverty-inducing decisions will undermine the necessary incentives to change their behavior. Apparently, such tough-love approaches do not apply to Republican voters, who are always quick to explain why their own taxpayer bailouts and welfare payments are different.

https://thedispatch.com/article/farmers-bailout-trade-war-trump/