The Trump administration is considering ways to help soybean farmers hit hard by China’s retaliation against Donald Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, andd the leading proposal is the kind of thing that would have Trump screaming socialism if anyone suggested such a program to benefit low-income people. Yes, the Trump administration is considering buying the soybeans China isn't to help prop up the farmers.
Even someone as practiced at Republican hypocrisy as Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley isn’t thrilled with this solution:
“I can also say that’s not what my farmers in Iowa want—help from the federal treasury,” Grassley told Politico. And he “reiterated his displeasure with the idea to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at the Senate hearing on the tariffs last week, ” the publication adds.
In other words, the large-scale farmers in states like Iowa, which Trump won in 2016, want an end to the trade wars—not more politically fraught government payouts.
That’s not to say that this is going to be the issue over which Grassley finally goes to the mat against Trump, but this soybean-buying plan does present some significant problems as far as political messaging and the overall Republican reception of Trump’s trade war.