WASHINGTON _ The Trump administration has readied a plan to provide about $12 billion in emergency assistance to farmers suffering from the effects of President Donald Trump's sprawling trade war, according to multiple reports.
A formal announcement from the U.S. Agriculture Department is expected as early as Tuesday.
The proposal highlights the ongoing toll of Trump's trade actions, particularly now that China and other trading partners have retaliated against the president's tariffs on imported metals and other goods by imposing levies aimed largely at America's agricultural community.
Texas alone now has billions of dollars in exports covered by payback tariffs, with a large chunk of that retaliation coming on critical cash crops like cotton, grain sorghum and soybeans.
It's unclear how the need for such an aid package, first reported by the Washington Post, squares with Trump's boast on Twitter on Tuesday that "tariffs are the greatest" or his insistence back in March that "trade wards are good and easy to win."
Some of Trump's fellow Republicans are also already balking at the idea of proffering a government-funded bailout over a trade war they already oppose on principle.
"This trade war is cutting the legs out from under farmers and White House's 'plan' is to spend $12 billion on gold crutches," Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a news release. "America's farmers don't want to be paid to lose _ they want to win by feeding the world."
But Trump had months ago asked Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to come up with a way to protect American farmers _ a key part of his base support in Texas and other electoral strongholds _ from bearing the brunt of a lingering trade conflict.
The resulting aid package, which wouldn't need congressional approval, would use existing USDA programs to provide direct assistance and other relief, according to news reports. It would rely in part on a Depression-era program known as the Commodity Credit Corporation.
Perdue said last week that some kind of mitigation was only appropriate when farmers are "disrupted by trade actions that they had nothing to do with."
"They are some of the best patriots in America," Perdue said last week at a forum hosted by Axios, admitting that Trump had made his job "more challenging" of late. "But they can't pay the bills with patriotism."
