Donald Trump's trade war with China and the rest of the world shows few signs of abating any time soon, yet the $12 billion in aid that was supposed to buoy farmers caught in the crossfire has done little-to-nothing to help them. Only about $840 million has been disseminated from the first installment of $6 billion that became available in September; and after the next $6 billion is released next month, that's likely to be it.
Uneven compensation has also become an issue, with hog farmers getting “$8 per head for 50 percent of their herd, while dairy farmers get 12 cents for every hundred pounds of milk," writes the New York Times. While dairy farmers are on track to get hit with a $1.5 billion shortfall for the second half of the year, they will only get about $127 million in aid, according to the National Milk Producers Federation. That pittance will do little to compensate dairy farmers who are enduring substantial losses due to Trump's policies.
“I think most agriculture producers feel that the payments have not come close to making up for the damage for the tariffs,” said Jim Mulhern, president of the Milk Producers Federation.
Distribution inequities, slow roll-out, and certain bureaucratic idiosyncrasies have all reduced the effectiveness of the bail-out for farmers, most of whom would rather not depend on government aid but nonetheless need it. “We don’t want a handout,” said Lynn Rohrscheib, who farms soybeans and corn in eastern Illinois. “We want trade. We want to sell the crop.” But given the market disruptions, Rohrscheib expects she will have to lay off around 18 employees if the trade war with China continues.
She said she was losing patience with the Trump administration. “We were all really supportive at the beginning,” she said. “We figured we didn’t know all the facts and something would happen and this won’t be a long-term thing. Now it looks like this is going to be a several-year thing and people are getting frustrated.”
The net income of farmers is expected to drop 13 percent, or nearly $10 billion, this year from last year, according to economic research from the Department of Agriculture.