Even a government bailout won’t undo the damage that Donald Trump’s tariffs have wreaked on America’s soybean farmers.
The president reiterated Wednesday that he intended to use the country’s supposed tariff money to subsidize American soybean farmers. Trump initially suggested the same idea last week, though he mixed up “billions” and “millions” in recounting how much money would amount to actual aid.
But speaking with CNN Thursday, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said that a bailout wouldn’t be the golden ticket that Trump has made it out to be, seeing as American farmers still need a market to sell their products.
“Right now, our largest export market in China is a zero buyer,” Ragland said. “They buy as many soybeans as all of our other export markets combined. And right now, with them having not entered into purchase U.S. soybeans, it is hurting prices and it is causing lots of uncertainty as a whole.”
Soybeans are the largest agricultural product that is exported from the United States, with the most beans grown in Illinois. The U.S. has been the number one supplier of soybeans to China.
“Government payments and programs never make farmers’ bottom line whole. It will oftentimes serve as a bandaid on a wound,” Ragland, a soybean farmer himself, told CNN. “What we need is markets and opportunity so we can actually make a profit and recoup the large investment that farmers have made.”
The Trump administration appears fond of bailouts. The White House is currently working out the kinks in a multibillion dollar lifeline to Argentina in an apparent effort to make their country great again, too. But after widespread reporting that the South American nation had replaced the U.S. as China’s soybean supplier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that the cash infusion had become a “credit swap line.”
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.
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