President Donald Trump’s plan to use tariff revenue to bail out farmers could be stalled by the ongoing government shutdown.
Trump said last month the administration would roll out subsidies for struggling farmers using revenue from his sweeping tariff policies. The White House will imminently announce a bailout plan that could put up to $15 billion in farmers’ pockets, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources. Trump has said the aid would come from tariff revenues, but experts say that’s far easier said than done.
“How to fund this bailout is very complicated, and different than it was in 2018,” Joe Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture during Trump’s first term, told Fortune. “You’d need Congress to reallocate tariff revenues. USDA can’t just say, ‘We’re going to take all that money and give it to farmers.’ That takes an act of Congress, and that’s tricky when the government isn’t even open.”
Trump’s move to lend a hand to farmers mirrors his first administration playbook, when the agricultural industry was similarly battered by tariffs pricing American farmers out of global markets. According to a 2022 USDA report, U.S. farmers lost $27 billion in agricultural exports between mid-2018 and 2019.
