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Trump, who has had broad support in many farm states, still insists that his get-tough approach to trade will ultimately help American farmers, a position Perdue reiterated last month when he said farmers are “resilient” and can plan ahead for market conditions.

Farmers are no strangers to foreign tariffs or to government subsidies. But receiving monetary support in response to a trade dispute set off by the U.S. government is unusual. The program, which is using a Depression-era fund, allows farmers earning less than $900,000 a year to receive money if they produce one of the agricultural products that has faced retaliation. In some cases, the government is buying excess food such as apples and orange juice and giving it away through nutrition assistance programs.

I think most agriculture producers feel that the payments have not come close to making up for the damage for the tariffs

Under the program, different types of commodities receive different rates — for instance, hog farmers get $8 per head for 50 percent of their herd, while dairy farmers get 12 cents for every hundred pounds of milk — creating questions about equity.

The dairy industry has been particularly critical of the program and, in a letter to Perdue, asked the administration to rethink how it calculates subsidies and to make them more generous to dairy farmers. The milk federation expects dairy farmers to lose $1.5 billion from the tariffs in the second half of this year and it has received only $127 million in aid.

“This was supposed to make sure farmers were not the victims of this trade policy,” said Jim Mulhern, president of the National Milk Producers Federation. “I think most agriculture producers feel that the payments have not come close to making up for the damage for the tariffs.”