Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently appeared on national television and called himself a "soybean farmer." He isn’t. He was a corn and soybean landlord who owned cropland valued around $25 million and collected up to $1 million a year in rent. The farmers Bessent claimed to represent are the ones in crisis, facing falling prices, mounting debt, and disappearing markets.
U.S. policy has left farmers dangerously exposed to single buyers. In 2024, China purchased more than half of America’s soybean exports, over $12.6 billion or roughly 26 million metric tons.
This harvest season, tariff brinkmanship froze that market, with China boycotting U.S. soybeans through late October. Without China in the market, soybean farmers face a looming financial disaster, with crops stockpiled and no clear buyers in sight.
Only recently did Washington announce that Beijing would buy 12 million metric tons before year-end, but Bessent already undercut that plan by pushing the timeline to early 2026. Even if those purchases materialize, they still trail last year’s volumes and keep farmers in limbo as the goalposts move. When politics slams the door on a major buyer, farmers eat the losses and landlords keep getting paid.
If this sounds familiar, it should. When Trump hit China with tariffs during his first term, Beijing halted many U.S. agricultural purchases. In 2019, farm bankruptcy rates reached a 15-year high, with most agricultural states exceeding their 10-year bankruptcy average.
Rather than fix the single-buyer vulnerability, policymakers papered over the damage. Trump deployed over $28 billion in aid, more than the net cost of the Great Recession auto bailout. The Market Facilitation Program sent checks to major operators, including then-Gov. Jim Justice's business, which received the $125,000 maximum payout. Foreign-owned corporations and thousands of city dwellers collected bailout funds while family farms struggled.
Now history is repeating itself. Last week, Trump announced a $12 billion “bridge” aid package for farmers hit by the current trade fight. But the damage is already done. USDA projects farmers will lose $100 per acre of soybeans grown this year. Farm bankruptcies jumped 57% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
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One-off sales and emergency checks don’t fix a broken system. Here’s why: Farmers are trapped in a squeeze they don’t control. Input costs, from fertilizer to machinery, have climbed in recent years, while prices are pushed down by volatile export markets and the bargaining power of consolidated buyers.
Even when Americans pay more at the grocery store, farmers capture only about 16 cents of every food dollar. The rest flows to consolidated processors, distributors, and retailers that increasingly control access to markets up and down the supply chain. When farmers capture pennies while landlords like Bessent collect $1 million annually from their labor, the system works exactly as designed, just not for the people feeding America.
Financial collapse feeds a deeper crisis. Suicide rates in agriculture are among the highest of any industry. In Shelby County, Missouri, there's one therapist for roughly 6,000 people. In neighboring Macon County, two farmers took their own lives this year alone.
The soybean crisis is also a warning light for the broader farm economy. After four decades of agricultural trade surpluses, the U.S. has run an agricultural trade deficit since 2022. USDA projects a record $47 billion trade gap for fiscal year 2025, driven by tariffs and rising imports of high-value foods.
Meanwhile, Trump’s contradictions keep piling up. He’s expanding the Argentine beef quota fourfold, angering U.S. ranchers squeezed by high input costs. Taxpayers are funding bailouts for domestic farmers even as the administration welcomes more foreign competition. And with no new farm bill in sight, farmers are making decisions without clarity on what programs or protections will exist come harvest.
The crisis isn't China. It's U.S. policy that exposes farmers to tariff risk, price volatility, and corporate concentration, while being sold as "America First."
Supporting farmers requires structural reform, not emergency checks. That means investing in regional processing, farmer-owned cooperatives, and local supply chains that give farmers alternatives to consolidated corporate buyers. It means reforming subsidies to incentivize conservation and diversified production rather than monoculture export crops. And it means stopping wealthy landlords like Bessent from capturing federal dollars that never reach farmers tending the land.
"America First" has left America's farmers last. Until policymakers choose market reform over bailouts, this crisis will persist. The people who grow our food and feed our families deserve better.
Anisha Steephen is a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department. Shannen Maxwell is a former policy adviser at Treasury. Both served during the Joe Biden administration.