The president said the relief could help bring down food prices for American households. Trump and other Republicans are racing to respond to voters’ cost-of-living worries as inflation drags on and tariffs push prices higher
US President Donald Trump has announced a $12 billion aid package for American farmers. The money to fund the farmers would come from the hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff revenue Washington has collected this year.
“This relief will provide much-needed certainty to farmers as they get this year’s harvest to market and look ahead to next year’s crop,” Trump said.
Trump made the announcement at an event in White House, which was attended by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, followed by a roundtable discussion with farmers across the country.
Rollins said that the money would be transferred to farmers by February 28 next year and that they would get to know the amount of the aid by the end of this month.
How will the aid package help?
The president said the relief could help bring down food prices for American households. Trump and other Republicans are racing to respond to voters’ cost-of-living worries as inflation drags on and tariffs push prices higher.
The aid package includes up to $11 billion in one-time payments through a new program run by the Agriculture Department.
Trump also promised to loosen regulations on machinery companies. “We’re going to take off a lot of the environmental restrictions that they have on machinery. It’s ridiculous,” he said, adding that the regulations “don’t do a damn thing except make it complicated.”
Trade funds package
Beijing’s state-owned trader COFCO purchased at least 14 cargoes of the grain from Washington for a shipment from December through January last month. According to a report by Reuters, eight vessels of soybeans will ship off from US Gulf Coast terminals in December, while the rest are slated for shipment in January next year from Pacific Northwest ports.
Although Beijing is still well short of its pledge to purchase 12 million tons of soybeans under a recent agreement, Bessent said the country’s buying pace is unfolding in a “perfect cadence.” On Monday, Trump said he believes Chinese President Xi Jinping will buy “even more than he promised to do.”
The recent rise in China’s agricultural purchases comes after the world’s second-largest economy temporarily turned to Argentina for soybeans instead of relying on U.S. exports.
In October, the Treasury Department announced a $20 billion currency swap agreement with Argentina, whose far-right president, Javier Milei, is a prominent Trump ally.
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