By Ryan Hanrahan
The Financial Times’ Susannah Savage reported that “the Trump administration is drawing up plans to use tariff revenue to fund a programme to support US farmers as they head into harvest facing falling export sales and rising input costs, agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said.”
“‘There may be circumstances under which we will be very seriously looking to and announcing a package soon,’ Rollins told the Financial Times on Wednesday. ‘We are reviewing markets every day,'” Savage reported. “She added that financing the bailout through ‘tariff income that is now coming into America’ was ‘absolutely a potential.'”
“The move follows mounting pressure from farm groups after China curbed purchases of new crop US soyabeans and as tariffs have pushed up costs for fertiliser, machinery and other imported inputs,” Savage reported. “With the soybean harvest already under way, farmers warn the crisis is deepening.”