SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – To put it simply, this year hasn’t been easy for farmers. But there may be some help on the way.
The White House is considering a multi-billion-dollar bailout package.
But before we get to that, we’d like to highlight a few things.
Ag experts tell us farmers are in “an economic recession right now.”
Surging costs and foreign retaliation from tariffs have been a big reason for all the hurt in the U.S. ag industry, not to mention key immigration-related labor shortages and plummeting commodity prices, which 16 News Now has been covering the last several weeks.
Of course, soybeans are in the spotlight right now. About half of those exports went to China, but since May that’s dropped to zero with the ban China placed on U.S. soybeans in retaliation for President Trump’s tariffs on the country.
The Trump administration is considering a massive bailout of at least $10 billion for American farmers hurt by his trade war, details of which are to be announced as soon as this week.
WNDU 16 News Now spoke with an ag expert on the state of the industry right now and how farmers are feeling about a bailout for an issue they didn’t cause.
“It’s a situation right now where it does look like we’re going to get an economic bailout,” said Jim McCormick, the co-founder and chief operating officer of AgMarket.Net. “The fact of the matter is that is President Trump and President Xi Jinping do even get together. he has made comments late last week that suggests that’s at least four weeks away. That would be by the end of bean harvest there for Michiana. I would guess a vast majority of your beans would be harvested by the end of the week. So, we’re in an economic situation where the producers plain and simple are just kind of in an economic crisis. What this is going to be if we do get this economic stimulus or bailout, however you want to phrase it, will essentially just kind of patch over the problem temporarily, but it’s still a situation without these markets that we’re going to be struggling to be profitable in the bean market.”
Farm bankruptcies rose in the first half of the year to the highest level since 2021. This is according to U.S. courts data.
Last week, the president blamed China for the pain farmers are facing, saying he plans to make soybeans “a major topic of discussion” when he meets face-to-face with China’s president in South Korea in a few weeks.
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