President Donald Trump is considering a bailout program for farmers using tariff income, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. U.S. farmers are preparing for a harvest season that could see fewer export opportunities and higher prices for tools and equipment due to the administration’s aggressive tariff policies.
“There may be circumstances under which we will be very seriously looking to and announcing a package soon,” Rollins told the Financial Times on Wednesday, adding that using tariff income to fund the package would be “absolutely a potential.”
In April, Rollins said the Trump administration would think about providing aid to farmers after trade groups criticized the planned tariffs.
The administration’s trade policies have already raised the cost of important farming tools, including a more-than-15% tariff on self-propelled machines like tractors and nearly 25% on herbicides and some pesticides. This is partly due to trade disputes with Canada, according to August data from the North Dakota State University Agricultural Trade Monitor. Agricultural machinery company John Deere has said the tariffs hurt its business, including a $600 million loss in fiscal 2025.
Retaliatory tariffs from China have also hurt soybean farmers, who previously exported more than 20% of their soybeans to China. Chinese tariffs on U.S. soybeans reached 34%, making them more expensive than beans from Brazil. This has priced U.S. soybeans out of the Chinese market just before the autumn harvest, according to the American Soybean Association.
“Retaliatory tariffs have blunted U.S. soybean growers’ advantage, restricting their access to the very market where demand is growing fastest,” the trade group said in an August report.
However, not all farmers are unhappy with Trump’s trade policies. Some, like shrimp farmers in Indiana, support the levies because they block cheap foreign competitors from gaining U.S. market share.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has criticized former President Joe Biden’s policies, saying his administration inherited a strong farm economy but “erased” Trump’s efforts to keep interest rates low and open new markets, which led to a $50 billion agricultural trade deficit.
Agricultural exports reached a record high in 2022 under the Biden administration, according to USDA data. But in 2023, imports exceeded exports by $21 billion.
The USDA did not provide additional details about what a possible farmer bailout would look like.
“We are constantly assessing the farm economy and exploring the need for further assistance but have not made a determination if an additional program is needed at this time,” a USDA spokesperson told Fortune.
How could a potential bailout affect farmers?
A Trump administration bailout may help farmers cover immediate losses caused by trade disputes, but long-term effects on certain markets could continue, according to Wendong Zhang, an associate professor of applied economics at Cornell University’s SC Johnson School of Business.
“It will compensate for the immediate economic losses due to tariffs, but it doesn’t necessarily improve the long-term competitiveness of agriculture on the global stage,” Zhang told Fortune. “It doesn’t address the reliability of the U.S. in using these policies globally either.”
A similar situation happened in 2019, after the first round of Trump’s tariffs. Between mid-2018 and 2019, U.S. farmers lost $27 billion in exports, according to a 2022 USDA report. Trump then gave $28 billion in subsidies to make up for those losses, Zhang said.
However, economic effects lasted longer. While the U.S. regained some of China’s soybean market share from Brazil, it stayed below pre-tariff levels one year after a trade deal.
Despite long-term market damage, farmers—a strong support group for Trump—have generally backed tariffs and government aid, seeing potential financial benefits. A 2019 study by Zhang and colleagues found that over half of farmers in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois supported Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, even though 76% knew U.S. farmers would lose money from the tariffs. More than 60% admitted U.S. agriculture would lose markets because of them.
Farmers’ support for Trump is expected to continue, but this round of tariffs may have harder-to-predict effects. Unlike Trump’s first term, when tariffs mostly targeted China, the current tariffs cover many countries, making U.S. agricultural exports more complicated.
“There’s so many players, products, and moving parts that…it’s really hard to know which ones will be affected,” Zhang said.
