Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted that American farmers will need a bailout from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Speaking on NBC News Sunday, the top Republican said that farmers would need support in the face of markets that were “not open to some of our commodities,” referring to foreign tariffs on U.S. goods that had resulted in response to Trump’s sweeping tariffs on nearly every country in the world.
“As a consequence of that, we’ve got a big harvest coming in here in South Dakota, corn and soybeans, and no place to go with it. So, what the president has said is, ‘I’m gonna support and I’m gonna help our farmers,’” Thune said. “And so we are looking at—I’m a member of the [Agriculture Committee] and have been for some time—we are looking at potential solutions to make sure that we can help support farmers until some of those markets come back.”
“They are anxious, they want to see markets open up,” he noted.
Thune said that he believed Trump wanted to establish “reciprocity” with other countries—but it’s not clear that is even the president’s objective. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick previously said that the U.S. accepting a reciprocal zero-percent tariff deal with a country was “the silliest thing we could do.”
Meanwhile, foreign countries are reportedly already filling the gap left by missing American goods. For example, China, the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, has not purchased any American soybeans since May, pivoting to suppliers in Latin America as Trump struggles to land an actual deal with Beijing.
Last week, Trump debuted his new plan to give farmers a cut of his “tariff money,” but recklessly mixed up “billions” and “millions” when talking about how much money would actually be available.
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