Trump wants another $16 billion to bail out farmers he's bankrupting

Trump’s costly trade war with China just got more expensive. Now he’s planning to force taxpayers to spend another $16 billion to bail out farmers his policies are bankrupting.

On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue announced the new $16 billion bailout fund, which is in addition to a $12 billion bailout for farmers the Trump administration approved last year.

Because of Trump’s failed trade war with China, farmers are seeing bankruptcies skyrocket, hitting the highest rates in a decade. Farmers are losing access to markets in China, one of America’s largest trading partners, as Trump continues to escalate the trade war.

When it comes to bailing out farmers for Trump’s bad decision-making, Purdue lied about where the money is coming from. On Thursday morning, Purdue falsely claimed “China’s gonna pay for these” through tariffs imposed by Trump.

China is paying as much for the bailouts as Mexico is paying for Trump’s border wall: $0.

Instead, the cost falls to American taxpayers and consumers as companies pass along the higher costs of importing products to teachers, firefighters, farmers, and anyone else who purchases goods made in those countries, say economic experts.

For example, Trump’s tariffs on washing machines have cost American consumers $1.5 billion over the last year.

In addition to paying more for household products, clothes, and shoes, now Trump is making taxpayers fork over an additional $16 billion for farmers who his policies are harming.

Trump seems eager to throw billions of dollars to a constituency that once supported him, but the deal is quickly souring as Trump is exacerbating their economic hardship.

Trump is “turning his back on America’s farmers when we need him the most,” John Wesley Boyd Jr., a Virginia soybean farmer told CNN in mid-May.

“We spent 40 years developing this trade relationship with China and in one fell swoop, it was all taken away,” Bret Davis, a fourth-generation soybean farmer, told Axios.

Last time Trump offered farmers a bailout, farmers were unimpressed.

“I don’t want free money. I don’t want bailouts. I want trade. Trade is what works,” Wanda Patsche, a corn and soybean farmer in Minnesota, said in July 2018.

Almost a year later, Trump’s ill-advised trade wars continue, and farmers like Patsche are being offered yet another bailout.

But it’s not free, and it’s certainly not being paid for by China.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.