America's Talking - Trump administration to deliver $12 billion in relief to American farmers

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

(The Center Square) – The Trump administration has proposed $12 billion in federal aid to American farmers, with many undergoing what Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described as an economic crisis. The Department of Agriculture will deliver the aid through one-time direct payments under its new Farmer Bridge Assistance program, meant to carry farmers from their current struggles to a “golden age for agriculture” the administration has promised. Payments will be released by Feb. 28, 2026, but farmers who qualify and apply will know what they’re getting by the end of December, according to Rollins. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxRead more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_495e0723-2dcb-4032-8416-9bf94c6cb426.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAlibe, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. The Trump administration is proposing sending $12 billion directly to American farmers, saying many have been in financial crisis because of tough times during the Biden administration. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's White House reporter, Morgan's Tweney. Morgan, tell us more about the proposal. So like you said, the administration has declared that they're going to be giving $12 billion to American farmers in one-time direct payments. And 11 billion of those are going to be to row crop

farmers, things like corn and cotton and wheat and peanuts. And then one billion is going to go towards specialty crops. And they said that farmers should know what their payments are going to look like if they are qualified and they apply by the end of December. And then those payments will be going out to row crop farmers at the end of February, especially. specialty crops, we'll find out later. But I noticed at the press conference, it was a brown table when they announced this earlier this week. It was interesting because I thought it was kind of a unique event because most of the time we hear the administration talking about how successful the economy is and how well things are going and, you know, things are happening

that have never happened before in American history, things like that. But this time, they did kind of focus on this crisis that Secretary Rollins described. She said it's a crisis that many farmers haven't even seen in their lifetime. And they didn't really go into the causes of that crisis. Well, they talked about the causes. They didn't really describe the nature of the crises very much during the press conference. And what they said was, oh, you know, they're in this position because of the mess that we've inherited from the Biden administration. And Secretary Rollins talked about there's inflation, persistent inflation, and that's caused elevated input costs for things like fertilizer and other things that farmers have to buy.

And they also said that President Biden hadn't accomplished any trade deals, particularly benefiting. that sector. And so it's put American farmers into this really tough spot. Speaking of trade deals, specifically at this roundtable, President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bassett talked about a deal for soybean farmers with China. China is committed to purchasing $40 billion in soybean crops. And both Trump and Besant said that soybean farmers in particular have had a tough few years? Yeah, they, it was kind of interesting. They did call out soybean farmers, and soybean farmers are part of those

row crop farmers that are going to be getting that $11 billion in assistance. But they did specifically say, like Besson talked about this deal that Trump accomplished with Chinese President Xi, where the Chinese Chinese, have committed to spending, I think Trump said it was $40 billion on soybean crops. And Besson defined it differently. He said something about how many metric tons they've agreed to purchase like $12 million or something like that. But yeah, soybean farmers have had a particularly tough time. And so, yeah, I thought the press conference was interesting because, like I said, the tone was different.

than most kind of events like this. And people have kind of speculated, you know, is it all due to the Biden administration's economic policies that American farmers are in this position? Or does some of it have to do with tariffs, which is right. Right. Which tariff has been a common theme, of course, during the second Trump administration. With many things, Trump, when he takes a unilateral action on his own, he gets heavily criticized for some of these actions that he takes. I'm not inside the Beltway, as you are, Morgan.

But for this one in particular, when it comes to farmers, I think there's a lot of, obviously, farmers provide Americans with foods on their table. I haven't heard a whole lot of pushback from Democrats or anyone else on this $12 billion. program. We'd like to scrutinize the spending of taxpayer dollars, et cetera. But have you heard any criticism of this deal? I haven't really heard a lot of criticism, except for that some have said this is more of like a bailout due to some of the administration's own policies. Meaning parents. Right, exactly. But I mean, I think a lot of farm organizations are happy about it obviously because they're getting help but so like I said during the press conference they didn't

really describe much like exactly some of the problems that farmers were facing besides like you know higher costs for a lot of things which a lot of us feel but we did say uh in a later press release the ag department said temporary trade market disruptions um elevated input cost persistent inflation and market losses from foreign competitors engaging in unfair trade practices that impede imports. Morgan, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.