Trump, who has attacked
Harley-Davidson for plans to move some production to its overseas plants to avoid retaliatory European tariffs, is looking to save “
my farmers” from the trade war he launched. Rural support was critical to his presidential victory. Unhappy farmers could spell trouble for midterm elections.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said last month at a Chicago convention that the
Commodity Credit Corporation is a “tool” he’s considering to comply with Trump’s instructions to “craft a strategy to
support our farmers against retaliatory tariffs. The program, which was started to help farmers during the Great Depression, allows the
Agriculture Department to borrow as much as $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury that could be used to buy crops from farmers that would go unsold in a trade war.
Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, has said using the funds would set a bad precedent by
politicizing farm payments, Bloomberg reported.
“I am against a one-time bailout of a situation created by the administration,” Peterson said earlier this year. Farmers “want their markets left intact and not screwed up by some policy. Giving them money
isn’t necessarily going to buy them off.”
Even Republican farm state Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said last month in a call with reporters that subsidies are “not what farmers in Iowa want — help from the federal Treasury,” the
Des Moines Register reported.
Critics say that spending the massive fund is a waste of public money to mitigate a Trump bungle. It would also be a significant expenditure just as the U.S. debt is on track to be the
biggest in history due to corporate tax cuts and spending hikes.
Former USDA chief economist Joseph Glauber told
The Financial Times earlier this month that many farmers already have some safeguards from government-backed price and income supports and insurance.
As for using CCC money, Glauber added: “I just don’t like the idea of the government coming up with some
balm to spread over wounds that are self-inflicted. It seems to be a huge moral hazard problem.”
Even those who support using the funds say they won’t be enough to save farmers grappling with decreasing demand triggered by retaliatory foreign tariffs. Farmer also risk losing key markets in the long term even as they’re subsidized. Farmers in Brazil are boosting soybean production to scoop up the Chinese market.
Brian Kuehl, executive director of Farmers for Free Trade, called the trade war “
downright scary.”
“When American soybeans and corn become more expensive, South America wins,” Kuehl said in a statement.
Farm lobby groups had been battling against the imposition of the U.S. tariffs, arguing instead for negotiations over specific issues.
“It’s a whole lot easier
not to wreck the car in the first place than it is to think about what a repair might look like,” a spokesman for the American Soybean Association told The New York Times earlier this year.
we're about to see a real lack of integrity from the repubs when it comes to no one calling him out
plus GERMANY going against us now, wait til you try to lease or buy a new BMW,Audi, VW, ETC, etc...
someone somewhere playing a bad economic game that's willing to hurt us all... You can't fight china economically, plus the U.S. is already in crippling debt. 