The Trump administration on Monday announced a $12 billion farm aid package that will provide financial assistance to American farmers, a key Trump base, whose industry has been hit hard by the president’s wide-ranging tariff policies.
The bulk of that money, up to $11 billion, will be distributed as one-time payments to farmers of “row crops” via the Agriculture Department’s new Farmer Bridge Assistance Program.
The remaining $1 billion will be set aside as a reserve fund for the department to deploy amid shifting economic conditions for “specialty crop” farmers, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
“We are very pleased to announce that today we are going to be effectuating an $11 billion … bridge payment to our farmers,” Rollins said during a roundtable announcement with agriculture representatives at the White House on Monday afternoon. “The money will move by Feb. 28 of 2026.”
Rollins added that farmers will be eligible to apply for the aid within the next two weeks, noting that her department is “holding $1 billion” back to better understand the needs and market conditions of specialty crop farmers, who grow fruits and other products.
The long-awaited aid announcement comes as row crop farmers, who rely on exporting commodity crops like soybeans, wheat, cotton and corn to international markets, have endured the negative economic consequences of Trump’s trade agenda.
The funding for the program, Trump said at the roundtable Monday, is a “small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs.”
But American farmers, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2024 election, expressed frustration over the loss of key international export markets amid Trump’s aggressive tariff policies. That, coupled with high input costs and low crop prices, has put a squeeze on an industry already vulnerable to natural disasters and climate fluctuation.
China, the largest export market for American soybeans, halted all soybean purchases in retaliation for the Trump administration’s high reciprocal tariffs earlier this year, sourcing instead from American competitors Argentina and Brazil. “This growing season, U.S. soybean farmers have faced a perfect storm of low crop prices, high production costs, and loss of markets,” the American Soybean Association, which lobbies on behalf of soybean farmers, said in a statement. It called the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program “a positive first step.” A $20 billion currency swap deal with Argentina in October further compounded American farmers’ frustration. They argued the Trump administration was bailing out their competition as they struggled to stay afloat amid rising input costs. China made its first purchase in line with that goal in November, buying 14 cargoes of U.S. soybeans, its first purchase since early January. That still lags behind what American farmers aim to export this year, and falls short of the 12 million tons of soybeans China pledged to purchase by February. Trump added that the administration also plans to strip environmental regulations from agriculture machinery manufacturing as a means of easing production. He did not provide specifics on the regulations he plans to roll back.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
Downward pressure on U.S. soybean prices in the absence of America’s biggest buyer caused bushels to reach near multiyear lows this summer, hovering around $10 per bushel, according to data from the Department of Agriculture.
“Bailing out Argentina doesn’t help my market,” Arkansas soybean farmer Scott Brown told MS NOW in October. “They’re my second-biggest competition. If we’re going to make American agriculture great and make it stand on its own two feet, then I need my second-biggest competitor to fail.”
After Beijing agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans this year as part of a trade agreement Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached in October, soybean purchases have slowly begun to climb.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during a New York Times event last week that he believes China is “on track” to meet the February purchase goal. Bessent expressed the same confidence at the White House announcement on Monday, saying Xi “heard President Trump.”
