The White House is planning to give its “tariff money” to U.S. farmers, though the exact figure could vary by billions of dollars, according to the president.
Speaking beside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the White House Thursday, Donald Trump claimed that his staffers had discovered an inordinate amount of uncounted cash in the budget for U.S. farmers, though he recklessly mixed up “billions” and “millions” when describing the amount of aid that could be available.
“The other day, it was very interesting, they found $31 billion,” Trump said. “They said, ‘Sir, we’ve found 31.’ I said, ‘You mean positively, right?’ They said, ‘Yeah, $31 million more than we knew.’ And they said, ‘We don’t know where it came from.’”
Trump then claimed he instructed his staff to “check the tariff shelf,” and that staffers later confirmed the money came from Trump’s tariffs.
“So what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be taking some money from all of the tariff money we’ve taken and we’re going to distribute it to our farmers, until the tariffs kick in to their benefit,” Trump said, promising that American farmers would eventually “be making a fortune” from his plan.
Trump: “The other day, it was very interesting, they found $31 billion. They said, ‘Sir, we’ve found 31.’ I said, ‘You mean positively, right?’ They said, ‘$31 million more than we knew.’ And they said, ‘We don’t know where it came from.’ I said, ‘Check the tariff shelf.’” pic.twitter.com/bt2Hli7yZQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2025
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday that there was “potential” to leverage tariff assets to aid the country’s agricultural industry. In focus were the country’s soybean, corn, wheat, sorghum, and cotton farmers, all of whom Rollins said were facing “difficult times.”
“We should have an announcement very soon, perhaps in the next couple of weeks,” Rollins told reporters.
That plan could be completely upended, however, if the Supreme Court decides that Trump’s tariffs are illegal.
Of course, farmers may have avoided these difficult times altogether if Trump had never instituted his aggressive tariff plan to begin with. Tensions between the Trump administration and Beijing have practically halted trade with China, nixing a crucial market for American farmers. The end result, according to insiders, is a mandatory bailout—which will weigh heavily on the American taxpayer’s dime.
“The pitch being made to the administration is, ‘Look, if you don’t have some kind of ace up your sleeve here, like an imminent deal with China and/or a string of other trade deals that are about to be announced that also happen to lighten the load on soybeans, then there’s going to have to be a bailout,’” an anonymous agriculture industry representative told Politico.
The post Trump Says He’s Giving Tariff Money to Farmers—but Mixes Up How Much appeared first on New Republic.
