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farmers
Wyden Says Trump's $12 Billion Farmer Bailout Exposes Folly of 'Destructive Tariff Spree'
"Donald Trump’s trade war is taxing families, killing markets for our farm goods, and driving farmers into bankruptcy," said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
Dec 08, 2025
Democratic US Sen. Ron Wyden was among those who emphasized Monday that President Donald Trump's erratic tariff policies have helped create the very conditions the White House is now citing to justify its new $12 billion relief plan for American farmers.
“Instead of proposing government handouts, Donald Trump should end his destructive tariff spree so American farmers can compete and win on a level playing field," said Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. "Donald Trump’s trade war is taxing families, killing markets for our farm goods, and driving farmers into bankruptcy."
"Trump’s plan to bail out farmers won’t even get agriculture communities back to even," the senator added. "They’re still paying more for fertilizer, equipment, and seeds, while grown-in-the-USA farm goods are facing more obstacles than ever in foreign markets. Don’t forget that all of this trade destruction and taxing was to raise money for Trump’s massive handouts to billionaires and the ultra-wealthy.”
Trump formally unveiled the relief plan Monday afternoon at a White House roundtable with top officials, lawmakers, and farmers of corn, soybeans, and other crops. Reuters reported that up to $11 billion of the funds are "meant for a newly designed Farmer Bridge Assistance program for row crop farmers hurt by trade disputes and higher costs." The other $1 billion is earmarked for commodities not covered by the program.
"Quite an admission that his policies have hurt Americans," economist Justin Wolfers wrote in response to the plan.
Farm Action, a farmer-led agricultural watchdog group, welcomed the relief package but said it's not enough to end suffering caused by "tariffs, soaring input costs, and years of volatile markets."
"The current problems facing our agriculture system have been decades in the making due to failed policy that prioritizes commodity crops for export, which only benefits global grain traders and meatpackers," said Joe Maxwell, Farm Action’s co-founder and chief strategy officer. "Without addressing the root causes of this issue, farmers will be left to continue relying on government assistance into the future. That is why Congress must take action and fix our failed subsidy system in the next farm bill."
Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, said that "bailouts are a denigrating Band-Aid to farmers whom decades of misguided domestic policy have left vulnerable to trade wars."
"Trump’s tariff tantrum and belittling bailouts will deepen agricultural sector consolidation, funneling money to a powerful few corporations, while running farmers further into the ground," said Wolf. "If Trump is serious about helping farmers, lowering sector consolidation and dropping food prices, he needs to look in the mirror. Chaotic tariff tantrums are no way to run farm policy. US farmers need fair prices, regional food markets, and policies that reward sustainable, humane production models—not trade wars.”
The $12 billion relief program comes after months of Trump tariffs and retaliatory actions by key nations—particularly China—that have amplified challenges facing US farmers, a key political constituency for the president.
Farmers and organizations representing them have been vocal in their criticism of Trump's tariffs and his proposed policy responses to the problems that the duties have intensified. As the Washington Post summarized:
Earlier this spring, Trump’s tariffs on China prompted the country to halt purchases of US soybeans. Then, the president offered a $20 billion bailout to Argentina, whose soybean crop sales to China have replaced those from US farmers. Later, Trump announced that the United States would buy beef from Argentina to bring down prices for US consumers, opening a new rift between Trump and cattle ranchers.
The new assistance package is particularly aimed at helping soybean farmers, who have seen a precipitous drop in sales this year, leaving them with extra supply, as the price of soybeans fell.
In October, Illinois soybean producer John Bartman said in a message to the Trump administration that "we don't want a bailout, we want a market."
"Bailouts don't work. Bailouts are band-aids," Bartman added. "What Trump is doing is destroying our markets, and when those markets disappear, we're not gonna get them back."
Ryan Mulholland and Mark Haggerty of the Center for American Progress echoed that sentiment in an analysis last month, noting that "writing a check to farmers helps in the short term, but even in the most optimistic scenario, input costs are likely to remain high, demand volatile, the climate ever-changing, and corporate consolidation and investor ownership of land firmly entrenched."
"Planning for next year’s planting season will be extremely difficult, but without a comprehensive plan to make farming a more sustainable, more prosperous enterprise, planning in subsequent years likely will not be any easier," they added. "President Trump’s 'solution' is to simply pay off farmers. Farmers want trade, not aid. And they want government policy that supports farmers and the communities where they live over the long term."
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Farmers Say Trump Tariffs Crushing Operations, Forcing Higher Prices Ahead of Holiday Season
"Placing a tariff or a tax on any kind of food item makes absolutely no sense."
Nov 26, 2025
US farmers warned on Tuesday that they are under increasing strain thanks to President Donald Trump's tariffs, and they predicted more price increases were coming for American consumers during the holiday season.
As reported by The Packer, representatives from the Kansas Farmers Union, supermarket chain supplier Royal Food, and North Carolina-based Red Scout Farm detailed during a conference call how Trump's tariffs on nearly all imported goods were raising prices on vegetables, fruits, grains, and meats.
Mary Carol Dodd, owner of Red Scout Farm, said during the call that her farm depends on products imported from other countries, including greenhouse materials, insect netting, and produce bags. With no low-cost domestic substitutes for these products available, said Dodd, she will have no choice but to raise prices.
"When the price of everything it takes to grow vegetables goes up, from soil to tools to fertilizer, packaging, transportation, then the vegetables on the holiday table go up as well,” Dodd explained. “For a small, diversified farm like us, those costs add up quickly. Our profit margins are already very thin, so every increase means tough choices."
For Dodd, those tough choices have taken the form of a 50% price hike on collard greens and kale, and a 50-cent price increase on mixed-lettuce bags.
Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said during the call that price increases were inevitable given that most farms already operate on razor-thin profit margins.
"Every added cost in the supply chain eventually shows up at the checkout line," he said. "Tariffs stack up on top of already high input costs, and families end up paying more for the same ingredients they bought last year."
Colin Tuthill, president of Royal Food, expressed bewilderment that the president would enact policies that raised Americans' food prices, especially after he won an election last year on the promise to reduce grocery prices starting on his first day in office.
"Placing a tariff or a tax on any kind of food item makes absolutely no sense to me," he said. "We're raising the price of food for the most in need."
The American Federation of Teachers, Century Foundation, and Groundwork Collaborative last week issued a report estimating that Thanksgiving costs for US consumers have gone up by roughly 10% over the last year, with staples such as onions, spiral hams, and cranberry sauce all recording increases of 22% or higher.
The groups also found that Trump's policies were squarely to blame for the price increases, and not just the tariffs. Specifically, they pointed to chaos at agencies such as the US Department of Agriculture that have weakened efforts to contain bird flu on US farms, which has in turn hurt the supply of poultry heading into the holiday season.
Although Trump has walked back some of his tariffs on staples such as coffee, bananas, and chocolate, the groups noted that this rollback likely came too late to offer relief to US families this year.
"Trump campaigned on bringing down the price of groceries on day one," they wrote. "Yet in the biggest grocery week of the year, families across the country aren’t seeing any savings. Instead, their budgets are being carved up alongside the Thanksgiving turkey."
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Why Aren't American Farmers Protesting in the Streets?
Perhaps farmers in the United States should look south, to Mexico specifically, for guidance on what they should do to improve their economic situation.
Nov 08, 2025
If there ever was a time for American farmers to protest, then that time is now.
Contract cancellations and frozen grant payments early in Trump's term paralyzed a series of projects for American producers, from financing new irrigation systems to strengthening local markets. Adding insult to injury, soy farmers nearly became a casualty in our administration’s trade war with China. But details of the current deal, while a much-needed reprieve, show that the negotiated soy purchases from China do nothing more than return farmers to Biden-level acquisitions. This, as US cattle ranchers have been left stretching their heads when a deal was brokered to purchase beef from Argentine ranchers, and American farmer calls for country of origin labeling and to challenge meat industry corporations are ignored.
Perhaps farmers in the United States should look south, to Mexico specifically, for guidance on what they should do to improve their economic situation. There, since mid-October, over 100,000 farmers from all over the country have participated in protests—roadblocks, to be precise—to demand that the Steinbaum government pass policies to address their economic problems. More than symbolic, the Mexican farmer protests have got results—spurring the government to make concessions and engage in dialogue.
Mexican farmers, even though they are on average smaller than their counterparts in the US, face the same general problem of dealing with low commodity prices alongside high fertilizer and pesticide costs. What has triggered the Mexican protests of late is how corn farmers are enduring the lowest prices since 2017, as over the course of 2025 they have seen the price for their product drop 21%.
To face this situation, the farmers took matters into their own hands and went to the streets.
Coordinated by el Frente Nacional para el Rescate del Campo Mexicano (the National Front to Rescue the Mexican Countryside), which emerged in 2023 and includes groups from around the country, farmers launched a national strike on October 14th. Their strike doesn’t stop production, but the circulation of goods, blocking roads around the country including at tollways. They demand a floor price, and that their government renegotiate the USMCA to stop the flow of cheap corn and other products from the United States. Joining the corn farmers, avocado and lemon producers are also demanding stable prices. In addition to their economic demands, the farmers have denounced the lack of law and order in the countryside, with some having to pay cartels so that they can market their crops. Such demands have been met with violence, with one farmer, Bernardo Bravo Manríquez, killed on October 20th for speaking out when seeking economic justice.
President Steinbaum has listened, acknowledging the farmers’ demands recently in her daily morning press meetings, Las Mañaneras. On October 29th, her Secretary of Agriculture, Julio Berdegué, announced proposals to respond to the farmers, including a direct payment this year of 950 pesos per ton of corn sold for farmers with farms up to 20 hectares in size (~40 acres) and a subsidized line of credit. A third proposal from the Mexican government is for a long-term plan to stabilize farmer income by setting a guaranteed reference price for corn that producers, the government, and food processors would negotiate, and also a government-backed initiative to assist with commercialization. The devil will be in the details, as what that price will be is not clear.
To keep the government honest, many farmers have maintained their protests, especially because the one-time direct payment does not reach the producers’ original demand of 7200 pesos per ton of corn.
This ensemble of policies being debated now in Mexico is neither radical nor strange. In the United States, there was the counter-cyclical payment program from 2002-2007 for various commodities when prices fell below a certain threshold. Another, similar initiative was the non-recourse loan program, which first appeared during the Great Depression, which then reappeared in 2014. This program has the government purchase products from farmers to keep reserves, or stocks, when prices fall below a certain level. The problem in the United States is that the threshold prices in these programs for when the government steps in either to purchase product or offer payments is so low as to make little real difference for most farmers.
Farmers in the US could organize and demand a better floor price in such programs that would cover, at minimum, the cost of production for their goods, and perhaps a little more so that they earn a profit. Instead, too often farmers believe that they alone can fix their economic problems, engaging in overproduction, which actually drives prices even further down and often pushes them into environmentally destructive practices.
Also not strange is the idea that American farmers would take to the streets to demand change. Back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to DC to call for fair prices so that they could stay on the land, blocking streets and negotiating with lawmakers on potential policy options. These actions, while not securing significant changes at the time, did spur subsequent activism and movements to emerge in groups like Farm Aid.
Trump takes farmers’ support for granted. Look no further than how soy producers were treated during the China trade spat, as if they had no agency and were made into pawns. Mexican farmers show another way—one where farmers take control over their collective destiny, taking to the streets to call not just for improved economic returns, but dignity. Producers in the US should follow their lead, perhaps even join them. It's not just the Mexican countryside that needs saving, but the American one also needs rescuing.
The current administration seems content to let conditions for US farmers continue to decline, but our food producers shouldn't stand for it any longer.
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