Trump administration to announce $12 billion in aid to farmers affected by tariffs

The Agriculture Department is expected to announce a $12 billion emergency aid package to help farmers affected by tariffs on their crops, CBS News confirmed Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the assistance that will be extended.

Earlier Tuesday, the president praised tariffs in a tweet. “Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs,” Mr. Trump wrote. “It’s as simple as that – and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the ‘piggy bank’ that’s being robbed. All will be Great!”

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican, criticized the bailout, and the administration’s underlying trade policy. 

“This trade war is cutting the legs out from under farmers and White House’s ‘plan’ is to spend $12 billion on gold crutches,” Sasse said in a statement Tuesday. “This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”  

The agriculture sector was already suffering before the president’s tariffs. Per-bushel soybean prices were already falling, dropping 19 percent since early May to a 10-year low and corn is down more than 15 percent. This has more to do with oversupply than the tariffs, though. At current prices, most farmers lose money on corn, soybeans and pigs.

President Trump’s tariff threats against China, Canada, Mexico and the European Union prompted immediate threats of retaliation. After $34 billion in tariffs against China went into effect earlier this month, China responded with its own equivalent tariffs soon after, targeting U.S. agricultural products including soy, corn, wheat, pork, poultry and more. 

About one out of every three rows of U.S. soybeans is shipped to China, according to estimates. Farmers in Iowa alone could lose as much as $624 million on soybean shipments to China, Donnelle Eller, an agriculture reporter with the Des Moines Register, told CBSN last month.

There’s no sign of a quick resolution to the trade dispute. The U.S. and China have threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs next week on $16 billion of each other’s goods. And on Tuesday, Trump announced plans to impose 10 percent tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports by the end of August. China said it would retaliate, leaving even more U.S. farm products at risk.

CBS News’ Katiana Krawchenko contributed to this report.

This is a developing story and will be updated.