American farmers are furious, and President Donald Trump is trying to calm them in the only way he knows how: throw money at them.

Ever since he started his trade war, overseas sales of agricultural products have suffered, cutting deep into farmers’ already-slim profit margins. To make up for these losses, Trump on Tuesday announced $12 billion in emergency aid—a bailout that, according to The Washington Post, will include “direct payments to farmers, efforts to promote U.S. goods abroad and an expansion of a program that purchases surplus farm output and distributes it to food banks and other anti-hunger programs.”

Some farmers aren’t thrilled by Trump’s move. “I mean, I understand they’re trying to help us. I get that. But it’s not a long-term fix. It’s a pacifier, so to speak,” Dave Kestel, a soybean farmer in Illinois, told CBS News. “I’d rather not have it.” And Trump has been widely criticized in Washington, even by members of his own party:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to put a band-aid on a self-inflicted wound. The administration clobbers farmers with an unnecessary trade war then attempts to assuage them with taxpayer handouts. This bailout compounds bad policy with more bad policy. — Senator Pat Toomey (@SenToomey) July 24, 2018

Tariffs are taxes that punish American consumers and producers. If tariffs punish farmers, the answer is not welfare for farmers — the answer is remove the tariffs. — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 24, 2018

Trump’s trade war may be new, but welfare for farmers is not. Indeed, the fact that $12 billion in aid is widely seen as a meager, temporary solution only highlights the broader problem: The American food system is broken, and has been for a long time.



There’s little doubt that Trump’s tariffs are punishing farmers. After the United States taxed imports of more than 800 Chinese products this month, Beijing responded by taxing 545 American items, including soybeans, rice, beef, nuts, pork, dairy, and produce. Much of the agricultural industry relies on exports to survive. Pork producers, for example, send about 26 percent of all production overseas, and one-third of U.S. soybeans are sent to China each year. As a result, the average hog farmer is now losing $20 to $25 per pig, Iowa Pork Producers Association President Gregg Hora told NPR, and soybeans have fallen to their lowest prices in a decade.

