Donald Trump has acknowledged that U.S. farmers were being hammered by his tariffs, as he vowed to bail them out.
The president was touting the tariff money coming into the U.S. on Thursday when he made the backhanded admission.
“We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers who are for a little while going to be hurt until it kicks in, the tariffs kick in to their benefit,” Trump said.
It comes as U.S. farmers have been sounding the alarms that they are facing serious challenges due to the president’s tariffs.
“We’re going to make sure that our farmers are in great shape because we’re taking in a lot of money,” he declared.
The president did not elaborate on the amount of money he believed needed to be appropriated for farmers or the timing of when they could expect relief.
The president made his comment while taking questions from reporters at the start of his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Oval Office.
Trump went on to claim that the U.S. government had recently discovered $31 billion it did not even know it had, thanks to his tariffs.
“What we’re going to be doing is taking some of the money from all of the tariff money that we’ve taken, and we’re going to distribute it to our farmers until the tariffs kick in to their benefit,” Trump declared.
The president claimed at some point they would be making a “fortune” but argued it’s a process that still has to “kick in.”
This will not be the first time Trump has had to rescue farmers after imposing tariffs. He was forced to bail out farmers to the tune of billions during his first term after they were hurt in his trade war with China.
Soybean farmers have been among those hardest hit. Soybeans are America’s top agricultural export.
Last month, the American Soybean Association sent a letter to the White House begging the president for help. It urged him to quickly reach a deal and warned that soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with China.
A video of a Missouri farmer confronting Rep. Mark Alford went viral last month, in which he warned that Trump is “not helping the farmer.”
“When are you going to stand up for us instead of kissing his a** for these trade deals and the tariffs?” the farmer said. “More so the tariffs than the trade.”
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