Trump has now twice devastated Ohio’s farm economy, and twice used taxpayer money for a bailout

by Marilou Johanek at Ohio Capital Journal

Making the same screw up twice and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, the old saying goes.

A fitting example?

Try two chaotic, trade-busting Trump administrations that twice devastated America’s farm economy and twice required billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts to farmers to fix this self-inflicted wound.

The extraordinary farm aid packages: a total of $28 billion in Trump’s first term, another $12 billion (so far) in his second, are enormous amounts of money to compensate for making the same screwy tariff blunders and expecting different results.

It’s insane.  

Sure, Ohio farmers welcomed the latest cache of what some call “Trump money” to get from this year to the next. But one told me it’s sad farmers have been backed into this corner.

“What the Trump administration has done is left farmers with little choice but to come hat in hand to taxpayers for relief from the lost market share and sky-high input costs directly related to tariffs on steel, lumber, aluminum, repair parts and fertilizers farmers need to produce,” said Shelby County farmer Chris Gibbs. 

Another producer likened the temporary “bridge” payments, announced last week, to a Band-Aid on an open wound.

Farmers trying to stay afloat with weak exports, falling crop prices and all-time-high production costs want sane agricultural policy not government handouts for failed trade and tariff policies coming out of the White House.

“We can’t keep hoping these short-term payments are going to restore viability to Ohio agriculture and restore economic certainty to farmer farmers in the state,” said Bryn Bird, president of the Ohio Farmers Union. 

Bird, whose family has farmed produce for decades in Licking County, was adamant.

“We need actual farm policy and agricultural policy and rural policy that’s going to create change. We are still operating on a 2018 farm bill that was pre-pandemic and have no indication from the federal government that they are working toward any bipartisan measure. We were told the administration might do a ‘skinny farm bill’ to address at least some farming concerns but that didn’t happen.”

Without significant changes enacted in an updated farm bill that finally addresses the mounting pressures on farmers, many won’t make it.

Shouldering ever higher farming prices to produce bumper crops for reduced demand and negative profit is crushing Ohio family farmers already operating on tight margins.

This year has been incredibly stressful for them, Bird said. They have much more to worry about than planting soybeans and selling them.

Some, who need off-farm jobs to subsidize depressed farming incomes and have health insurance, can’t find affordable rural child care. 

Many self-employed farmers get their health care from the ACA marketplace, which is about to get a lot more expensive.

Like millions of Americans, farmers running independent businesses brace for their premium costs to double or triple.

ACA subsidies had lowered those costs but Republican majorities in Congress refused to extend them.

Ohio farmers in their 60s who have not yet reached Medicare age are panicked, said Bird.

“I just talked to a farmer whose insurance premiums were $220 a month and now they are going up to $1,200.00. He said to me, ‘I can’t do it.’”  

Farmers priced out of health insurance may go without, but they cannot go without the banks that underwrite their farms, and those annual operating loans are facing increased scrutiny and denials.

With American farm debt projected to hit a record $591.8 billion in 2025, driven by serious input costs (fertilizer, fuel, machinery, labor) and devalued commodity markets, the risk of repayment grows from those with no runway to pay off their debts.

“The biggest thing I’m hearing now is how many farm loans are being denied,” Bird groaned. “Farm lenders are looking at turning away 40 to 60% of farm loans this coming year.”

Most farmers typically take out operating loans at the start of growing season based on their projections, what they need to buy, seeds, inputs. When they grow and sell products, they pay off the operating loan and have their profit to reinvest in their farms or take home.

At least that was the farm banking model, said Bird. But it didn’t account for the shambolic trade policies of two Trump administrations.

Can banks manage that while holding hundreds of millions of dollars nationally in agricultural debt, she asked.

The central Ohio farmer recalled a Republican congressman from the state telling distressed farmers they “just have to wait, that the Trump tariffs were going to be good for family farmers. What the farmers were saying back was, can you tell my bank that?” said Bird.

“Will you call the bank and tell them just to wait; these policies are going to pay my bills?”

She fears more farm delinquencies and bankruptcies if short-term tariff bailouts replace long-term farm policy.   

“When we were on Capitol Hill this fall demanding a farm bill, the banks were with us because if agriculture defaults, banks default and once that happens things start to cascade.”

Bird hopes the country doesn’t get to that point.

But twice Trump blew up trade deals that devastated the U.S. farm economy and twice he had to bail out farmers for the pain he caused.

Unless Congress finds a spine, Trump’s farm policy will continue to be, well, the definition of insanity.