President Donald Trump signaled Thursday that he could funnel aid to American farmers — a big political support base — hit by fallout from his trade wars.
Trump’s aggressive trade policies and resulting fallout have weighed on US farmers, including hitting export markets like China.
Facing turmoil in a core part of his political coalition, the 79-year-old Republican said at the White House that he would be using revenue from tariffs on imports to bail out the farmers.
“We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we’ve made, we’re going to give it to our farmers,” Trump said.
He conceded that farming communities are “for a little while, going to be hurt” until the tariffs “kick in to their benefit.”
The agriculture sector has come under pressure this year with export markets hit by trade disputes while farmers also grapple with lower commodity prices.
Since returning to the presidency, Trump has imposed a sweeping 10-percent tariff on goods from almost all trading partners while raising this rate for dozens of economies.
His moves have added to business costs for many companies, who are in turn feeling a squeeze on their margins.
Trump’s latest comments also bring echoes of his first presidency, when retaliatory tariffs on the United States caused more than $27 billion in US agricultural export losses from mid-2018 to late-2019.
At the time, the United States engaged in a tit-for-tat tariffs war with China, among other issues.
The first Trump administration provided aid to farmers too as the trade war gutted exports to what had been a massive market for US soybeans and pork, among other products.
As trade tensions continue to simmer, China — a top global buyer of soybeans — has continued diversifying its purchases and pivoting to countries beyond the United States like Brazil.
As of late August, the American Soybean Association said China had not booked new crop export orders for US soybeans in the latest marketing year.
“China’s absence from the new crop export market has dealt a heavy blow to US soybean futures prices,” the association wrote.
