US farmers will get US$4.7 billion in a first round of direct government aid to compensate for market losses caused by retaliatory tariffs from China and other trading partners.
The move was largely bemoaned by agriculture groups even as they welcomed the assistance.
Soybean growers, the hardest hit, will get US$3.6 billion, according to the plan the government released on Monday.
Pork producers will receive the second-highest payments, totaling US$290 million, and dairy farmers are also eligible for assistance, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said.
The sorghum, corn, wheat and cotton industries will receive aid as well, it said.
Farm groups said the plan would aid producers even as they called for an end to the trade war.
“Today’s aid announcement gives us some breathing room, but it will keep many of us going only a few months more,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington, the biggest US farmer group.
“The real solution to this trade war is to take a tough stance at the negotiating table and quickly find a resolution with our trading partners,” he said.
Farmers are a key part of the rural political base that elected US President Donald Trump, who has promised they will emerge better off from a trade war.
Many agricultural producers are accepting that message.
Still, an extended trade dispute that lingers into the fall harvest — and the Nov. 6 midterm elections — holds the potential to shake that support.
As soybean and other commodity prices have tumbled in the wake of the trade tensions, Trump has been under pressure from lawmakers representing rural districts to back away from tariffs.
Those districts may play a key role in the November elections.
Farmers can apply for aid starting Sept. 4, US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said.
That is just as harvest season begins. Payments may start going out as soon as the middle of next month.
The price-support funds do not need congressional approval, as they are administered under USDA disaster procedures that date back to the Great Depression.
The USDA will spend an additional US$200 million promoting agricultural exports as part of the aid.
The government also will step up commodity purchases to help boost prices, making at least US$1.2 billion of purchases, including US$559 million of pork.
The Trump administration “will not stand by while farmers are targeted by countries who are acting in bad faith,” Perdue said on a conference call.
The total size of the package, which the USDA estimated at US$12 billion when it was announced last month, may be less than that should trade conditions change, USDA chief economist Rob Johannson said.
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