President Donald Trump of the United States on December 8, 2025 announced farm aid worth $12 billion as bailout against trade war expenses.
The plan emerged at a White House roundtable meet between the President, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins and farmers.
Trump said that the farm aid kitty comes from a tiny portion of “tariff-related revenues,” per Yahoo Finance.
Some $11 billion will immediately settle mounting expenses for soybean, corn, wheat, cotton and rice growers under the fresh Farmer Bridge Assistance Program.
The disbursement of the remaining $1 billion is still under discussion but could favor specialty crop growers, per Ag Secretary Rollins.
Lucky Row-Croppers & Soy Farmers
Row croppers including soy farmers will benefit from the initial one-time sum via the Farmer Bridge Assistance Program.
According to Bloomberg, growers with gross farm turnover of under $900,000 in the 2022-24 tax period will be eligible for the initial bailout.
Eligible growers ought to apply for the one-time payment before December 19 and should include cultivated acres during the highlight period.
Remuneration rates will come out end 2025 while the one-time financial settlement will not extend beyond February 2026.
For soybean farmers, the aid follows an October 2025 bilateral trade breakthrough with China, which agreed to buy 12 million tonnes this season.
Beforehand, soy growers had been under dire straits because trade with China had plummeted to a trickle, forcing federal prices down.
By the October agreement, China had bought 29% less goods from the U.S. annually, despite exceeding its worldwide trade surplus by $1 trillion.
In 2024, China had accounted for 50% of the $24.5 billion in soy export value by the United States.
Outside crops, Trump has ramped up investigations into the fixing of federal prices for commodities like meat, to alleviate cost hikes.
Opponents of the investigations claim these are tariff repercussions rather than fixes.
Bailouts however remain quite an attractive prospect to farming communities irrespective of who is right. This is apparent politically: among the 444 counties that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) labels agricultural-dependant, 432 voted for Trump in 2024. To understand more on how bailout appeases farmers, peruse the below stats.
United States Farm Aid Statistics
Farm aid or bailout is one of the ways the U.S.’ government directly compensates farmers for trade- or disaster-related offsets. Regarding trade, bailouts try to offset lapse in agricultural exports due to retaliatory tariffs. In the 2018-19 trade war, for instance, federal farm shipments fell by $27 billion. China’s farm purchases from the U.S. halved to $9 billion in 2018 from $19.5 billion in 2017. Goods worth $450 billion including agricultural were overtaxed between China and the United States. Prices that farmers receive domestically also decreased as a result of surplus at home, forcing farmers into financial straits.
Trump would foot the bill for disillusioned farmers with checks initially worth $32 billion in 2020. In the the second trade war in 2025, the bailout package hit $12 billion, per a December 8, 2025 White House statement.
How much aid did soy farmers get in the 2018-20 trade war?
Cash give-outs by the Trump administration to compensate soy farmers for losing prices from trade war with China amounted to $8.5 billion in 2020. Estimates however put the actual trade toll on soybeans to have been $5.4 billion less than what farmers received.
What is the annual Ag bailout during Trump presidency years?
Here is how direct payments have transpired in Trump’s presidency (2017-20/2024-25), according to Politico:
| Year | Direct Payment Value |
| 2025 | $12 billion |
| 2020 | $32 billion |
| 2017 | $11.5 billion |