The White House will dedicate up to $12 billion in financial aid to American farmers who have been negatively affected by President Donald Trump’s tariff policies in recent months, the president announced on Monday.
Part of the aid package will begin rolling out near the end of February, although it’s not yet clear how quickly the money will be distributed or who will be prioritized for first payments. Information about how to apply for the assistance and how much money farmers are eligible for will be available by the end of this year.
The assistance will be paid for through the funds raised by the global tariffs despite initial suggestions earlier this year that the federal government would tap into the USDA’s emergency fund.
“The United States will be taking a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs, we are making a lot of money from countries that took advantage of us for years,” Trump said during a roundtable meeting at the White House. “They took advantage of us like nobody’s ever seen. Our deficits are way down because of tariffs.”
A significant portion of the package, about $11 billion, will go toward producers of crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, rice and cotton, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The remaining money will go toward those growing fruits, vegetables, and other specialty crops — but those funds will be decided at a later date, Rollins said.
“Today we are announcing $11 billion, we are holding $1 billion back,” Rollins said. “Today’s announcement covers all of our row crops but some specialty crops and others, we are still working with to best understand where they are in the farm economy and ensure that we’re making every forward-moving position that we need to.”
The announcement comes after concerns from farmers that Trump’s tariff policies would harm their production and sale of certain products, especially ahead of next year’s planting season.
Farmers have warned for months that Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policies could be harmful to the agriculture sector, especially after retaliation from China resulted in the country halting purchases of U.S. farm products.
Despite farmers citing negative effects from Trump’s trade war, the president and his administration officials sought to blame the economic struggles on the Biden administration instead.
“We inherited a mess of affordability — you can call it affordability or whatever you want — but the Democrats caused the affordability problem,” Trump said, alluding to his previous comments that the “affordability issue” is a political hoax amplified by Democrats. “We’re the ones fixing it.”