The Trump administration said it would make $4.7 billion in payments to U.S. farmers to offset losses from trade battles rippling across the globe, MarketWatch.com reported. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said yesterday that the funds constitute an initial payment to farmers hit by tariffs from major U.S. trading partners, which have left producers of commodities from soybeans to pork to apples vulnerable during a steep downturn in the agricultural economy. Farmers have been anxiously awaiting details of the aid package the USDA pledged in July. The USDA said then that it would extend up to $12 billion in emergency aid in response to U.S. trading partners’ “unjustified retaliation” to trade policies enacted by Trump. Soybean farmers are slated to get roughly three-fourths of the direct payments, or $3.6 billion, followed by producers of pork, cotton, sorghum, dairy and wheat.
