American farmers’ disappointment with Mr. Trump

President Donald Trump on December 8 announced a long-awaited rescue package to support farmers affected by US-China trade tensions. According to US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the government will issue $11 billion in “interim payments” directly to crop farmers by the end of February 2026 and retain $1 billion to assess the needs of specialty crop producers.

Blaming his predecessor Joe Biden for causing a “total mess” and “unprecedented high inflation” for the economy, President Trump said this relief would not “be possible without tariffs” and emphasized that $12 billion was “a large sum of money”.

“Tariff measures are helping to collect hundreds of billions of dollars and we are spending part of it on farmers because they have been treated poorly by other countries for many reasons, maybe right, maybe wrong,” Mr. Trump said at a roundtable meeting at the White House.

However, the President did not specify whether the money for the relief package would come entirely from tariff revenue. In September, he proposed using tax money to support farmers. However, if the US Supreme Court declares Mr. Trump’s tariff measures unconstitutional, the President may be prohibited from using that money to spend on relief packages.

The relief comes after months of anger and frustration among American farmers about losing access to the Chinese market due to tariffs enacted by President Trump. China is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans and has been a major customer of American soybean farmers since the early 2000s, regularly purchasing between half and two-thirds of US soybean exports.

In his first term, after Mr. Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, Beijing retaliated with tariffs on US agricultural products, mainly soybeans, and transferred some orders to Brazil. At that time, Mr. Trump allocated a total of $28 billion in support to affected farmers in 2018 and 2019.

After Mr. Trump imposed new taxes on Chinese imports earlier this year, China continued to stop buying US soybeans, instead shifting to sourcing from Brazil.

President Trump in October met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Korea to discuss many issues, including tariffs, and asked Beijing to resume buying soybeans from Washington.

Although the White House quickly announced that China had agreed to buy 12 million tons of soybeans this year and 25 million tons each year for the next three years, Beijing has not yet confirmed those numbers. From October until now, China has only ordered about two million tons.

However, Mr. Trump still said on December 8 that China was buying “a huge amount of soybeans” and the government was “very happy about that.” He announced the world’s second largest economy would “buy more than what was promised”.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who plays the role of key trade negotiator with China, added that every time President Trump discusses with President Xi, whether in person or by phone, he always starts by asking Beijing to “buy more soybeans”.

“We don’t talk about geopolitics. We don’t talk about trade. Everything revolves around soybeans,” Mr. Bessent said, noting that the government is also looking for alternative markets when Japan has agreed to buy $8 billion worth of corn, soybeans, rice and many other products from the US.

Cordt Holub, a corn and soybean farmer in Iowa, praised President Trump’s new relief package. “This is an early Christmas for farmers,” he said.

However, not all soybean farmers are satisfied, especially those struggling with plummeting prices and lost markets. Some people expressed disappointment that this relief amount is just a drop in the bucket compared to what they need and what they have lost.

John Bartman, a soybean farmer from Illinois, said the aid was only “approximately the amount that China would buy in a normal year.”

“Why do we need this money in the first place?”, he asked.

Randal Shelby, a soybean grower in Arkansas, described the newly announced relief package as a “slap in the face” for American farmers.

“I’m dealing with a bunch of overdue and due bills, all because of their actions. Meanwhile, the relief money will be distributed to all the other farmers who have nothing to do with soybeans,” he said.

Shelby, who voted for Trump in last year’s election, noted that every type of agricultural crop has been affected by the trade war with China, but soybean and rice farmers have been hit the hardest.

For many months, he was on the brink of bankruptcy. Shelby said the main reasons were high fuel costs, rising interest rates, plunging crop prices and falling demand from China amid geopolitical tensions with the United States.

“There are a lot of us at risk of bankruptcy right now,” Shelby said, adding that banks are still complaining about new lending so it’s unclear whether he can continue farming next season.

He emphasized that although President Trump regularly claims that gasoline prices have dropped sharply, prices have still fluctuated above 3 USD a gallon (3,785 liters) since 2021.

“Farmers across America are struggling,” said Joe Maxwell, co-founder of the nonpartisan advocacy organization Farm Action. “Mr. Trump’s relief package confirms that fact, $12 billion is just a fraction of the losses farmers have suffered from trade wars, tariffs and skyrocketing input costs.”

“We need long-term reforms that direct investment into growing healthy food at home using regenerative methods, with lower input costs, not just temporary patch measures when problems appear,” Maxwell added.

Recently, the number of bankruptcies in the agricultural sector in the US has increased sharply. Farmers are also becoming increasingly stressed as they face an uncertain future and uncertainty about US-China trade relations.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, agricultural bankruptcy filings increased to 93 in the second quarter, compared to 88 in the first quarter and nearly double the number of 47 at the end of 2024. All of 2024 recorded only 216 bankruptcies.

The emotional burden of financial stress has had devastating consequences, with a series of reports of farmer suicides.

President Trump on December 8 praised the “Big, Beautiful Act” he issued for eliminating the estate tax, a federal tax on inheritance, saying farmers commit suicide because they cannot save their farms.

“They love the farm, they love their work and they love their lifestyle, but they end up committing suicide, lots of suicides,” he said.

New analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation forecasts heavy losses in the 2025-2026 crop year for major crops, including $15.1 billion for corn, $6.7 billion for soybeans, nearly $5.9 billion for wheat and $3.4 billion for cotton. Sorghum and rice producers also faced losses of over 1 billion USD.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, agricultural production costs are expected to reach 467.4 billion USD in 2025, an increase of 12 billion USD compared to 2024.

Shelby said even if China bought the promised amount through February of next year, it wouldn’t help soybean farmers, because the harvest ended in November and they had to sell their products at a loss during that period to pay their bills.

He is even more disappointed with the US $ 40 billion bailout package for Argentina, a competitor of US farmers in an effort to gain market share from China.

“Why does it take so long to help American taxpayers, when it only takes them two seconds to throw $40 billion to Argentina without a vote or a congressional hearing?”, Shelby said.

Jeff Winton, a New York farmer and founder of Rural Minds, a nonprofit focusing on the mental health of farmers, said he did not believe the new aid package was “sufficient or timely,” even calling it “too little, too late.”

Winton said that farmers are “very divided” about their support for President Trump. According to him, the current crisis stems from the policies that Mr. Trump himself implemented in his first term, before Mr. Biden took office. Therefore, the bailout package is not the solution to the problem.

“Suddenly, the person who hurt you becomes your hero. You forget what caused your problems. You are grateful for the relief and love you received and forget what got you into trouble,” he said.