Senators push to expand farm assistance
Farm-state senators want a second round of farm aid in coming months that can be combined with other measures to help farmers, including legislation dealing with fertilizer prices.
Sen. Chuck Grassley says any farm aid package must include language allowing permanent, year-round sales of higher ethanol fuel blends nationwide. This would create $25 billion in new U.S. economic activity, with about $10 billion from increased demand for American corn, the Iowa Republican said Wednesday.
Grassley also says economic relief for farmers should include a bill reintroduced last month with Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst and Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin. The legislation would require USDA to study competition in the fertilizer market and how that impacts prices paid by farmers.
The push comes as corn, soybeans and other crop producers are dealing with low prices and low demand for this year’s bumper harvests on top of high prices for everything from fertilizer to fuel.
“We’ve got to find some way to help bring down some of the escalation in the input costs. And that's getting caught up in the trade wars, too,” says North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven, referring to the impact on imported fertilizer prices.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IowaTake note: The Trump administration is expected to announce any day an aid package worth more than $12 billion for farmers hurt by the trade tensions with China. Hoeven, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, tells Agri-Pulse that the aid package would be one of two for producers. He also says the first round of payments should go to more than just soybean growers. “Soybeans, certainly, but there are other crops that have been impacted by trade as well,” he says.
USDA is preparing the first package based on a $13 billion transfer from the department's Commodity Credit Corporation spending authority. Congress would enable the second package by loosening restrictions on USDA's Section 32 spending authority.
Boozman: Section 32 remains viable funding source, whatever tariff case outcome
Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman says the administration will still be able to tap tariff revenues for farm assistance even if the Supreme Court strikes down the president’s tariffs.
“There's always going to be some customs and some tariffs in place,” Boozman told reporters on Wednesday. “There was money coming into that fund prior to the Trump administration. So that is a viable pot of money.”
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In November, the Supreme Court will consider the legality of the Trump administration’s use of emergency powers to place new tariffs on almost every U.S. trading partner. The Court of International Trade and a U.S. appeals court both ruled the tariffs illegal.
The case does not cover the new sector-specific U.S. tariffs, which do not rely on emergency powers.
The Section 32 account receives 30% of U.S. tariff receipts, with some transferred to Commerce and some to USDA. Treasury says the U.S. received $165 billion in tariff revenues from October through August, up from $70 billion during the same period in the previous fiscal year.
Take note: A White House official told Agri-Pulse on Thursday that the government shutdown is keeping the administration from unveiling its tariff assistance plan.
“We didn't expect the shutdown to continue this long,” the official said. “That's been kind of tripping up our ability to kind of get the pieces together.”
The official added that “the intention is for something to come out soon.”
Carney leaves Washington with promises of more talks
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney left Washington Wednesday and headed home with assurances of more focused talks but no new tariff reductions.
Both sides agreed to target tariff discussions on steel, aluminum and energy “and directed their teams to conclude this work in the coming weeks,” Carney’s office says.
In addition to a meeting with President Trump on Tuesday, Carney met with Vice President JD Vance, as well as several senators, including Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.
FRAC urges USDA to reinstate food insecurity survey
Food Research & Action President Crystal FitzSimons said Wednesday the group would be urging USDA to change its mind on dropping its survey on food insecurity in the U.S.
Her comments came at the annual FRAC breakfast at the National Press Club.
“October 22 is the last time that they're going to be releasing it,” she said. “We will be doing a lot of work to talk about that on October 22 and I hope everybody in this room will, as well.”
Florida lawmakers urge USDA to include specialty crop producers in assistance plans
Fourteen House members from Florida want Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to ensure that specialty crop growers are included in economic assistance plans.
In a letter, the lawmakers say specialty crop growers are facing high costs for fertilizer, fuel, machinery and other inputs that row crop farmers are facing but must also “routinely contend with persistent labor supply shortages.” They also say specialty crop producers are ineligible for several revenue support programs that row crop farmers can access.
"Many of USDA’s past economic aid programs have primarily benefited row crops while specialty crop producers are forced to rely almost exclusively on ad hoc disaster assistance,” they say.
The lawmakers say that specialty crops “are also vulnerable to trade and cost disruptions,” and that their exclusion from any assistance “would undermine the goal of stabilizing the agricultural economy.”
Final Word:
“Farmers in my state are saying what we've all been hearing: They don't want aid, they want trade. They want an opportunity to do what farmers do, and the president is running this tariff plan out of his back pocket. There's no coherent plan or logic that anybody can discern … and it's creating a lot of uncertainty and a lot of pain in Georgia.” – Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., to Agri-Pulse.
Kim Chipman, Oliver Ward and Noah Wicks contributed to today’s Daybreak
This story has been updated. An earlier version misstated the size of U.S. tariff revenues.
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