Lawmakers and the Trump administration face unfinished agriculture business including biofuel issues and financial relief for farmers.,Key discussions this month include the expiration of Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies and China’s soybean purchases.The holiday season is in full swing and 2025 in the final stretch as lawmakers and the Trump administration face a bundle of unfinished agriculture business. This includes key biofuel issues and financial relief for crop growers hurt by tariffs. The House and Senate are back in session Monday after the Thanksgiving break. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has said an announcement on a support package for farmers is imminent and could land at soon as this week. Deputy Ag Secretary Stephen Vaden has indicated that the payment plan would take into account recent changes in commodity markets. In an analysis released last week, the American Farm Bureau Federation warned that five of seven major crops are set to see larger average losses this year. AFBF said rising input costs and export uncertainty exacerbating the economic squeeze on producers and increasing the need for further assistance.<\/p>\n
But some farm program critics are pushing the administration to learn from the assistance programs stood up in Trump\u2019s first term to improve efficiency and avoid overspending. A group of non-profit organizations wrote to Rollins and USDA Undersecretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Luke Lindberg last week, arguing that any aid should be subject to strict payment limits and oversight. The groups, which included the R Street Institute, Farm Action and Taxpayers for Common Sense, pointed to a 2022 review of the 2018-2019 Market Facilitation Program by the Government Accountability Office, which found $800 million went to ineligible recipients or were not the correct amounts. A separate review also found underlying issues in the way USDA calculated the tariff impacts. \u201cUSDA should take prudent measures to direct aid to where it is needed most and avoid unnecessary spending or waste that could further exacerbate our fiscal outlook,\u201d the groups argue.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest issues facing lawmakers this month is the expiration of the expanded premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act insurance policies. Democrats have been promised a vote on the issue in the Senate this month. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on CNN\u2019s State of the Union Sunday that Democrats stand to benefit politically if Republicans don\u2019t block an extension. \u201cIf they don’t want to do anything about people’s costs and their grocery bills and their health care and pummel them with these punishing Trump tariffs, then we will simply have to beat them in the midterms. We have no other choice.\u201d The White House reportedly floated a two-year extension of ACA subsidies, and Trump told reporters last week some kind of extension may be necessary. Whether he can get congressional Republicans to go along with that remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
China soybean watch continues With just one month to go before China\u2019s deadline for ordering 12 million tons of U.S. soybeans, Beijing remains well off the pace. China could still be as much as 10 million tons short of that commitment, according to USDA sales data. Trump also seems to be taking note of the mountain left to climb. He told reporters last week that he brought up the cadence of Chinese ag purchases with President Xi Jinping during a Monday phone call and said that Xi had agreed to pick up the pace. \u201cI asked him \u2013 \u2018I\u2019d like you to buy a little faster. I\u2019d like you to buy more,\u2019\u201d Trump told reporters. \u201cHe\u2019s more or less agreed to do that.\u201d Following the call, Reuters reported that Chinese buyers had placed orders for another 10 U.S. cargoes, worth $300 million. The Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement Wednesday that Xi had relayed the message that both sides should \u201ckeep moving forward in the right direction on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit.\u201d But Rollins stressed again on Wednesday that the long-term project has to be reducing the industry\u2019s reliance on its China sales. \u201cWhen our farmers in America are so reliant on one purchaser, that is not healthy for anyone,\u201d Rollins told Fox Business\u2019 Maria Bartiromo. \u201cThe larger point here is we\u2019ve got these new trade deals, and we\u2019re going to start selling soybeans to a lot of other countries, beginning immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talking North American trade The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is slated to hold a marathon three-day listening session on a North American trade pact as part of its feedback gathering process ahead of a review next year. The agency will hear stakeholder views on the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement from Wednesday to Friday. The free trade agreement, which was inked during Trump\u2019s first term, has a built-in review mechanism that directs the three parties to review the deal after six years and decide whether to extend, reform or scrap it after 2036. A comment period on the deal that closed earlier this month received more than 1,500 comments, including responses from over 100 ag groups and more than 90 individual farmers and ranchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers and the Trump administration face unfinished agriculture business including biofuel issues and financial relief for farmers.,Key discussions this month include the expiration of Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies and China’s soybean purchases.The holiday season is in full swing and 2025 in the final stretch as lawmakers and the Trump administration face a bundle of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/post01.exeyezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}