Friday morning, impeached president Donald Trump tweeted out an ALL CAPS edict: "If our formally targeted farmers need additional aid until such time as the trade deals with China, Mexico, Canada and others fully kick in, that aid will be provided by the federal government, paid for out of the massive tariff money coming into the USA!" Except that it was, again, in all caps.
Problem number 1: he still doesn't understand how tariffs work. The massive tariff money isn't coming into the U.S., it is being paid by U.S. taxpayers in the form of higher prices for the things we are buying. Problem number 2: his Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has said, as recently as Thursday no new farmer subsidies. "I would not anticipate" another round of aid Perdue said at USDA's annual Agricultural Outlook Forum in Arlington, Virginia. He said that farmers have "got to farm for the market and what it's telling them and what their capabilities are from a production perspective."
Last month, Perdue said that Phase 1 of the China trade deal was set to kick in and that would mean more purchases of U.S. agricultural products by China soon. Thus, there would be no need for another round of aid to farmers. "If China is going to achieve that, and we believe they are, we think they have to buy earlier than the traditional export season from the United States," he told the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention. But that was before the coronavirus outbreak and the apparent economic hit China is taking as a result.
The government has already targeted $28 billion in aid to agriculture, more than the auto bailout under President Obama, to try to blunt the damage done by Trump's trade policies. The farm groups all expect to see more, but are somewhat surprised that he's trotting it out this early, and right on the heels of Perdue's denials. "Farmers are no dummies. They've seen this get rolled out the past two years, programs invented out of whole cloth," Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, told the Washington Post. "The president is going to do whatever he can to appease the farmers because it’s an election year. The only surprise here is the timing."