Farmers have gotten ‘astronomical’ $43 billion in subsidies directly from Trump administration

The Trump administration has directly authorized some $43 billion in subsidies to farmers on top of what Congress has enacted, a large chunk of money that critics argue the administration would not have had to consider if not for the imposition of tariffs and the war with Iran.This month, Trump announced the Agriculture Department’s $8 billion Harvest Fuel Relief Program, aid for farmers dealing with record-high diesel prices, during a campaign rally. But according to Scott Lincicome, the vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute and an expert in trade policy, the administration has spent $43 billion in total on similar aid programs to relieve the effects of its own policy moves.“All without Congress, and all really to handle either trade war or Iran war-related damages, and it is pretty astronomical,” Lincicome told the Washington Examiner in an interview.For reference, $43 billion is just under double what NASA spent last year.The Market Facilitation Program, in 2018 and 2019, authorized $23 billion of that pot of money. Vincent Smith, a nonresident senior fellow and the director of agricultural policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said that spending was to compensate farmers for damage to prices caused by the Trump trade wars, particularly for soybeans and hogs.“Those monies go overwhelmingly to the largest 20% of agricultural producers, and in fact very heavily concentrated on the largest 10% of farms, in terms of sales, so that means that most of these monies are being directed to about 165,000 to 75,000 farms,” Smith told the Washington Examiner.“Relatively little or very little goes to the median and below farm in terms of sales,” Smith added.Trump has long been a proponent of tariffs and pushed during both his terms to impose levies on countries that he says are cheating the United States when it comes to trade. But supply-side critics have panned the tariffs and argue that these farm subsidies are a direct result of poor policy on the trade side of things.And then last year, the Trump administration authorized $12 billion as part of the Farmer Bridge Assistance program.Finally, the $8 billion announced this month comes as diesel prices have spiked to record highs as a direct result of the war with Iran.“Tonight, I am also pleased to announce that the Department of Agriculture will be launching a new ‘Harvest Fuel Relief Program,’ providing our Farmers with 8 BILLION DOLLARS in support to offset Diesel costs during this Harvest Season,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.“When Republicans win, we will pass even more funding for our Great Farmers, and Fuel prices will come tumbling down as soon as the Iran War is over, which will happen very quickly!” he added.Notably, this $43 trillion in spending is through USDA programs created by the administration, not through Congress. Richard Stern, an economist at free-market think tank Advancing American Freedom, said the administration has the ability to allocate aid, but typically doing so has been reserved for emergencies such as natural disasters, not high diesel prices.“The intention of this really was, you know, for when there’s like a market failure, there’s a crop failure, there’s something major, serious going on that’s unforeseen,” he said. “This is a massive number.”Stern pinned the blame for the need for aid on Trump’s tariff policies as well as, to a lesser extent, the ongoing war with Iran.“This is not an emergency aid to deal with a crisis, an unforeseen crisis,” he said. “Rather, it’s emergency aid to deal with a very foreseen, very intentionally man-made crisis that’s resulted from the tariff policies themselves.”Critics have also targeted the timing of the $8 billion aid package coming just before the midterm elections.BOMBARDIER DEFUSES TRUMP THREATS WITH $270 MILLION INVESTMENT, INCLUDING IN SWING STATESSen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) are both facing must-win Senate races in their agriculture-heavy states.A RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls shows Hinson with a slight edge over her opponent, while Marshall is polling 0.3 percentage points higher than his challenger in Kansas.