Trump to aid farmers as China shuns US crops

As it did in 2018, the White House plans to dole out relief funds to struggling US farmers who have lost their biggest customer, write Alan Rappeport and Kevin Draper from Washington

- Alan Rappeport and Kevin Draper

Punishing Chinese tariffs that prompt painful retaliation. American farmers on the brink of bankruptcy. A multibillion-dollar bailout to keep farmers afloat.

It is 2018 all over again as the Trump administration prepares to address the same policy crisis it faced seven years ago when President Trump, who imposed stiff tariffs on Chinese imports, had to shield the US agriculture industry from the fallout of his trade war.

Trump has once again hit China with tariffs in his second term, eliciting the same economically painful retaliation by Beijing. As a result, the Trump administration is expected to unveil another round of economic support for farmers this week. The scale and mechanics of the bailout remain unclear, but the crisis is even more urgent as China, the biggest buyer of American farm products, has drastically scaled back purchases of US crops this year.

"I'm going to do some farm stuff this week," Trump said at the White House on Monday.

The need for federal farm aid demonstrates the limits of Trump's trade agenda, which relies on tariffs to gain leverage in trade negotiations that are intended to open up markets to US exports. Instead, the tariffs have pushed up costs for American farmers, who are facing higher prices for fertiliser and equipment. At the same time, they have lost their biggest customer.

"We have an export-dependent industry, we've angered its biggest customer, and, boom, now we're bailing out the export-dependent industry," said Scott Lincicome, the vice president for general economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "It's kind of a slow-motion train wreck six years in the making."