Day 1,128: Trump announces another potential socialist-style bailout for farmers affected by his trade wars
Donald Trump claims he hates socialism.
Donald Trump also claims he loves American farmers.
Donald Trump also claims that he is winning his trade wars with China and other nations.
Donald Trump proved all three of the above statements wrong in a single shout-tweet Friday.
The farmers have been adversely affected because Trump’s trade war with China has severely reduced agricultural exports as a result of tariffs. Trump is inventing things, again, when he says that the bailout money would come from “massive tariff money coming into” the U.S.
In reality, tariffs are paid by companies importing the goods —they are not paid to the U.S. government— and those added costs are generally passed along to the end consumer. In short, when there are trade wars, consumers pay more.
Trump’s Friday tweet flies in the face of claims he’s made in recent months.
Trump’s dangling of extra bailout money stands in contrast to his recent boasts that farmers should start buying more land and “bigger tractors” to keep up with the historic boom that he promised his new trade agreements would deliver.
Additional aid could also draw some criticism from Democrats in Congress who have questioned the fairness of how the funding is distributed geographically and among commodity sectors.
The Agriculture Department has already paid farmers more than $23 billion to offset their financial losses under Trump’s trade war since 2018, on top of other tariff relief measures like commodity purchases and marketing assistance.
The bailout stands in contrast to remarks Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture made yesterday.
Secretary Sonny Perdue has repeatedly said farmers should not expect another round of aid for 2020, now that the U.S. and China have reached a deal to boost American farm exports.
“I would not anticipate it,” Perdue said Thursday at USDA’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum in Arlington, Va. Farmers have “got to farm for the market and what it’s telling them and what their capabilities are from a production perspective.”
More farmers are going bankrupt every day. They don’t want to be bailed out by the government for a fraction of what they could earn before the multi-year trade war begin. Trump knows that Iowa and other Midwest agricultural states are important politically, so to tamp down the effects of his disastrous policies, he’s going to raid the coffers provided by taxpayers.
Trump has cut farmers down at the knees with a trade war that is making both China and the U.S. suffer losses they will never recover. To try and save face, Trump is using socialism to throw money at the problem he created.
1,128 days in, 334 to go
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