Everything has a price. The trade war declared by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, with generalized tariffs on all its partners, and the measures to try to alleviate the cost of living crisis, which this policy is causing, . The owners of farms in the Midwest, many of whom supported Trump in the presidential elections a year ago, see how after China’s withdrawal from the local market due to tariff tensions, while their livestock herds depreciate due to competition from Argentine meat.
To alleviate the damage to farmers and ranchers, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, plans to approve this Monday an aid of 12,000 million dollars, the equivalent of 10,300 million euros, for agricultural owners in difficulties, as he has announced. The Washington Post. The mechanism would be a kind of rescue program for the agricultural and livestock products most affected by the aggressive tariff policy of the tenant of the Oval Office.
The Republican president met this Monday with the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, and the Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, to outline the details of the aid plan. Trump has blamed the situation experienced by farmers and ranchers on the previous Joe Biden Administration.
Rollins has recognized that the agricultural sector is facing an unprecedented crisis, due to the increase in costs, especially of fertilizers, seeds and machinery such as tractors and combines. The head of Agriculture explained that farmers will receive the aid before the end of next February.
The bulk of the aid, about 11 billion, will go to the new assistance program of the Department of Agriculture. The resources will be dedicated to producers of corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, cattle, wheat and potatoes. The rest, the other 1 billion, will go to aid for basic products that the main program does not cover, according to he Post.
White House Press Secretary Anna Kelly has spoken about the measure: “Today’s announcement reflects the president’s commitment to helping our farmers, who will have the support necessary to bridge the gap between the failures of [el expresidente Joe] Biden and the effectiveness of the president’s successful policies.”
The measure, in any case, must have the approval of Congress, although not much resistance is expected from legislators due to pressure from farmers on both parties.
The rural crisis in the Midwest of the United States was unleashed in the spring, when Trump approved the tariffs that . Beijing, which until then had been the main customer, stopped buying grain from United States farmers, who saw the prices of their crops plummet. Nearly two hundred large agricultural farms have acknowledged financial problems due to this circumstance.
On the other hand, after the elections last November for the mayor of New York, and for the presidency of the States of Virginia and New Jersey, where the Democrats also won, all with a speech about affordability, The White House tried to regain the initiative on the matter. It approved tariff reductions on beef from Argentina, Brazil and other Latin American countries, and other trade reductions on other food products such as coffee, fruits and vegetables.
Livestock farmers, who were already experiencing problems due to the sharp decline in the livestock herd due to the drought and the narrow margins imposed by the scant competition between “the big four”, as Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef, the giants of the meat sector in the United States, are known, aggravated their situation due to the arrival of Argentine meat.
With a million-dollar financial rescue and the tariff exemption on meat from that country, he stirred up the ranchers, one of the traditional electoral supports of the Republicans.
So the new aid program represents an implicit recognition of the serious consequences of Trump’s aggressive trade policy for the US primary sector.
“President Trump is supporting our agricultural industry by negotiating new trade agreements to open new export markets for our farmers and strengthen the agricultural safety net for the first time in a decade,” Kelly said.
