President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable discussion with farmers and lawmakers in the White House Cabinet Room, December 8, 2025, in Washington. On the left is Cordt Holub of Dysart, Iowa, and on the right is Meryl Kennedy of Monroe, Louisiana. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The federal government will provide $12 billion to American farmers who have been harmed by “unfair market disruptions,” President Donald Trump said during a roundtable event at the White House on Monday.
Trump has repeatedly said the financing is available through tariff revenues, portraying his aggressive trade policy as a boon to farmers rather than a reduction in their share of the global market, as critics of the policy suggest.
“I’m pleased to announce this afternoon that the United States will take a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs… and we will distribute them to farmers as economic aid,” Trump said.
But U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins told reporters after the event that the money came from the department’s Commodity Credit Corporation, which the White House report says is regularly funded by Congress.
Rollins said the money, which administration officials described as “bridge payments,” would go to farmers by the end of February.
While not officially touted as part of Trump’s series of events highlighting affordability issues, the president has stated several times that he is addressing the affordability crisis, which he “inherited” from President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
“Democrats are causing the affordability problem,” Trump said. “And we are the ones fixing it.”
The bulk of the $11 billion in funding will go to row crop farmers who grow barley, chickpeas, corn, cotton, lentils, oats, peanuts, peas, rice, sorghum, soybeans, wheat, canola, crambe, flax, mustard, canola, safflower, sesame and sunflower seeds, according to a USDA statement. Rollins said the department planned to set aside $1 billion for unnamed specialty crops.
Payments will be delivered before the GOP law goes into effect
Trump, Rollins and other Cabinet-level officials have said the payments are to be used as a “bridge” to implementing policies included in this year’s Republicans’ massive spending and tax cuts bill.
“This bridge is absolutely essential given where we are right now,” Rollins said.
They blamed the Biden administration for a more negative outlook for farmers. They argue that Biden has failed to finalize trade deals and that his focus on environmental policy has led to higher costs for the agricultural industry.
The package caps payments at $155,000 per recipient, USDA Under Secretary for Agricultural Production and Conservation Richard Fordyce told reporters on a conference call tardy Monday afternoon.
Iowa farmer Cordt Holub spoke at a White House event where he thanked Trump for the package.
“I want to thank you for this bridge payment,” he said. “Christmas is early for farmers.”
Louisiana rice farmer Meryl Kennedy said the industry was struggling but thanked Trump for funding aid and benchmark price changes in the Republican mega bill.
“Our farmers can feed this country and many countries abroad, but we need fair trade, not free trade,” she said.
The impact on tariffs was ignored
But they did not mention the effects of the tariffs, which the president’s critics say are responsible for reducing agricultural exports and hurting farmers’ bottom lines.
Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota, ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that the package “pick winners and losers in the agricultural economy” and would not provide certainty for farmers or reduce high operating costs.
“It will not restore U.S. agricultural exports to pre-trade war levels,” she said. “It also ignores the fact that the president’s tariffs are responsible for the enormous financial burden felt not only by American farmers, but also by working people, manufacturers, retailers and small businesses. All Americans are tired of the affordability crisis created by this administration and Republicans in Congress. We will be back here next year unless the administration changes its policies.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, also sharply criticized the program.
“The reason farmers need help at all is largely because Donald Trump has betrayed them and decimated their businesses with his disastrous tariffs,” Schumer said in a speech on Monday. “Now Donald Trump is patting himself on the back, acting like a hero to farmers, spending taxpayers’ money to clean up the mess he created. This is textbook incompetence from Donald Trump.”
Another round?
Asked during the roundtable by a reporter whether he would be open to another round of relief for farmers, Trump said it would depend on the growth of international trade and said farmers would not want further aid.
“It depends on where we go,” he said. “China buys a lot. Other countries buy a lot. And you know, the interesting thing about farmers is that they don’t want help. They just want to have a level playing field.”
He later stated that this would be unnecessary.
“We will make farmers so strong – and I’m not even talking about financial issues, because they just want to be able to produce what they can produce,” he said. “We will make them so strong that it will actually be a golden age for farmers.”
After the event, Rollins told reporters that Trump was “open to more.”
