The shutdown is delaying Trump's farm bailout. Farmers say it won't be enough even when it happens.

Cypress

Well-known member

The shutdown is delaying Trump's farm bailout. Farmers say it won't be enough even when it happens.​

The Trump administration has already missed a self-imposed deadline this week to announce its plan to help US soybean farmers. The gridlock on Capitol Hill means that the delays are likely to continue.

Farmers are caught between foreign countermeasures with significant effects (Chinese purchases of US soybeans have fallen from $12.6 billion last year to $0 currently) and a large harvest that is now underway and may be impossible to sell at a profit.

American Soybean Association president Caleb Ragland recently appeared on Yahoo Finance and noted that proposed ideas for $10 billion to $14 billion in aid are akin to "putting a Band-Aid on an open wound."

"We are bleeding economically," he added, saying eventual relief will come "by not having tariffs that are in place," referring to both President Trump's tariffs and the countermeasures from foreign nations.

Ragland's group estimates that soybean farmers are facing losses of $109 per acre this fall.

Farmer Blake Hurst, former president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, added in his own comments that Trump's tariff plans have, in his view, been "a complete bust."

More important to Hurst than a bailout is that he wants Trump to "drop the tariffs and resume normal trade relations."


 
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