Headline: New York Times, 12/8/2025
Mr. Fordyce called it an “economic loss program” and said it was not structured to compensate farmers harmed only by trade wars and retaliatory tariffs, but was more generally designed to help struggling farmers, whatever the cause of those struggles.
A $12 billion bailout would cover only a third of farmers’ losses, at best, according to the best estimates.
Shawn Arita, a senior research economist at North Dakota State University, estimates crop producers will lose between $35 billion and $43 billion on what they just harvested this fall, as the trade war with China is not their only problem. The cost of key supplies has been rising for years, and interest rates on their production loans remain high. The prices farmers are receiving on the world market for most crops are below what they spend to produce them.
Almost 70 percent of lenders surveyed by the American Bankers Association last month reported being concerned about the financial health of growers of grains like corn and soybeans, compared with just 11 percent worried about the financial health of ranchers. [emphasis added]
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