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Posted on 05/17/2026 9:59:55 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
The Trump administration and GOP lawmakers are seeking to win over U.S. farmers, a core constituency for the president during his 2016 and 2024 White House wins that has been aggravated by rising prices caused by his trade policies and the Iran war.
Ahead of a midterm election season where the GOP is working to win every vote it can, the White House and its allies in Congress are reaching out to farmers in red and blue states alike.
On the way back from Beijing after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump assured farmers that they would be pleased with the deals he’d made with a major purchaser of U.S. agricultural goods that has cut down on its cash for U.S. soybean and other goods amid a trade fight with his administration.
“The farmers are going to be very happy. They’re going to be buying millions of dollars,” Trump told reporters on his way back from China.
Earlier, Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that Xi agreed to purchase U.S. soybeans, oil and liquified natural gas and other energy, along with Boeing jets.
A White House official told The Hill that the agricultural agreements made “will help our farmers gain unprecedented access into Chinese markets.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Bloomberg on Thursday that he expected China to commit $10 billion to purchasing agricultural products.
But experts say there are questions about whether China will follow up with commitments on promises that may have been made between the two leaders.
“It’s a good step to hear that some agreements were reached and that progress was made on the issue of making sure that farmers have access to markets,” said Brian Reisinger, an author and rural policy expert, adding that “the question with China is always, you know, the devil being in the details with the Chinese, are they going to follow through on their commitments, and are those commitments can be part of a broader framework where there’s more fair and more enforceable trade standards.”
“The reality is that we’re in a unique position here, having arguably America’s biggest adversary also be America’s biggest buyer of agricultural products, so it leaves farmers in a tough spot until they see exactly what’s going to happen,” he said.
Lawmakers had put pressure on the administration ahead of the trip to come back with some wins for U.S. farmers.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said he hoped to see deals come out of China for Boeing, beef and beans. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a post on social platform X said he had a call with Greer before he traveled with Trump.
In the call, Grassley said he “emphasized the importance of agriculture” and that Greer “understands that importance.”
Soybeans are the top U.S. export to China. The country is also a major market for beef and corn.
China largely scaled back U.S. purchases of agricultural goods as retaliation against the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs and trade tensions, an effort intended to cause pain for a group that has supported the president.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday on CNBC that soybeans “are really all taken care of” from the trade agreement signed between the U.S. and China in October, when Beijing agreed to buy at least 25 million metric tons of soybeans annually for three years.
But Trump also told reporters that an extension of the tariff truce that was agreed upon in October and got China to restart soybean purchases was not discussed because it “wasn’t brought up.”
“We didn’t discuss tariffs. They’re paying tariffs. They’re paying substantial tariffs, but we didn’t discuss anything,” he said.
Republicans are worried that farm communities could not show up at the polls in the fall. The fear is more that the farm vote will skip out on the elections, rather than back Democrats.
“The question for the midterms is whether or not farmers and folks in rural communities see the kind of economic results they need to feel like they’ve got to come out in November,” Reisinger said. “These are not necessarily areas that are going to, you know, suddenly flip Democratic, right, but there are areas where whether voters turn out or not is almost exclusively driven by whether or not they feel like their leaders are fighting for their economic well-being.”
Republicans more broadly are already concerned about turnout in a midterm year, since Trump’s base has come out with less force when Trump has not been on the ballot.
Daniel Swift, senior research analyst for the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it’s the nature of the deals made with China that is most important.
“A one-time purchase commitment isn’t that helpful for a Midwest farmer, a soybean farmer; they need consistent market access and be able to make long term kind of investment decisions,” Swift said. “It’s good for them, for sure, but it’s not a panacea for farmers that are really struggling under high import costs.”
“No farmer is going to change their behavior for a one-time purchase commitment,” he said. “It’s too damn expensive.”
The pressure for these deals comes as the Senate is set to take up a farm bill passed by the House that would “expand investments in rural communities, bring science-backed management back to our national forests and restore regulatory certainty in the interstate marketplace,” among other things, according to the House Agriculture Committee.
It is unclear, however, when the upper chamber will consider the legislation. Lawmakers are racing to finish up an immigration enforcement funding package before they leave for recess the week of May 25.
The sprawling piece of legislation was the subject of controversy in the House over several provisions aimed at limiting lawsuits against pesticide makers, preventing localities from adopting pesticide regulations and blocking the need for additional permits for pesticide use.
The Senate is expected to make its own revisions to the farm bill, requiring the House to hold another vote on the legislation.
Josh Manske, a farmer and board member of the Iowa Farmers Union, said he wants to see agreements “hard in writing” to ensure China follows through.
“One of the big things I’ve been looking for when it comes to any sort of trade or our markets has just been some stability,” Manske said. “Any business wants some sort of stability and being able to plan long term, and when you have markets that are disrupted in such a way, on one day off the next, we’ve got commitments, we don’t have commitments, that makes it hard to plan.”
He said he was surprised that more hadn’t come out from the talks, and as for the midterms: “The proof will be in the pudding.”
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As to the supposed deals:
1. For tariffs not to be brought up is weird, insofar that they are a (if not THE) key flashpoint in our relationship with China.
2. It's an act of faith (a foolish one, I think) to believe in Chinese trade commitments where money hasn't changed hands.
3. It's unclear what impact any deal (no matter how credible) made today could have on elections six month away.
Maybe check with how the farmers feel and not how YOU feel.
They aint feeling real good now. And i know lots of farmers. Both in the Dairy Industry as well as tge grain.
Last time a president instituted tarrifs like Trump did was Benjamin Harrison. The result was a collapse of the farm community and extreme individual hardship at the common level.
Grover Cleveland got blamed for the worst depression other than the great depression which resulted in Clevelands party failed to see any majority till about 1910.
Now that it is late, Trump is trying to put lipstick on a pig. Its still a pig.
Kansas wheat production is going to be down about 38% this year.
Corn production will be down because of the added cost of fuel and fertilizer caused by Trumps war in the mid east on behalf of Israel. There wont be 200 bushel corn this year on many farms.
Produce has, and will suffer because of lack of irrigation in the southwest. Quality is already down.
Another cause of produce problems is the wild eyed maniacal raids on produce farms by ICE chasing off labor.
Result is...people will start to go hungry. And when that happens, it wont be real safe in areas in this country.
This next year will be amusing to watch.
Farmers being less than 2% of GDP seem to have inordinate political clout. This must change. I don’t give a f about them. If imported food is cheaper I say import away. Sorry but deindustrialization and importing replacement workers has turned me not a hard man. We are a lowest common denominator oungry.
We can import wheat.
Yup. Doesnt matter TCS boy..
Have a nice day paying over 5 bucks a gallon for fuel to cut that wheat jackweed. Have a nice time paying over 5 bucks a gsllon for fuel to truck that grain jackweed.
Enjoying your meat prices jackweed? Hows those grocery prices going for you.
All of this because of your meglomaniac in chief.
And your the one mentioning gorebull warming.
TCS boy.
Snap payments are not coupons.
We thought BCS was bad. But the Trump Cult is as bad.
And dont worry TCS boy. Like i said. It will be amusing to watch when you boys have to watch your back when you venture out.
“The government has issued about 420,000 H-2A visas for agricultural workers every year since 2023, which amounts to about half of the 812,000 agricultural worker jobs. They are concentrated in states that grow fruits and vegetables as opposed to grains, which are increasingly planted and harvested using machines. The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule.”
https://stateline.org/2025/11/21/trump-allows-more-foreign-ag-workers-eases-off-ice-raids-on-farms/
“In June, ICE raided a dairy farm in New Mexico”
“a July raid on a California marijuana grower”
“[November] ICE agents descended on an onion farm in Northern California, arresting four immigrants on charges of illegally selling farmworker visas”
https://stateline.org/2025/11/21/trump-allows-more-foreign-ag-workers-eases-off-ice-raids-on-farms/
End of the agricultural industry! /s
“you boys have to watch your back when you venture out”
Maybe FR management should sell black balls.
The number of farmers is so low now that it cannot be their individual votes that are important to politicians, even with the electoral college balancing act between high pop urban and low population ag regions. What is important to politicians to extract from agricultural areas isn’t your vote, it is money, and so family farms’ needs are ignored by both parties in favor of pleasing the interests of deeper pockets- big corporate ag and related businesses that benefit from ever more government- dependent monoculture. That is why neither party seems to mind farmland being sold to Chinese investors and aren’t interested in incentivizing people to take up farming. They really wouldn’t care if just one company owned it all, so long as it donates to their campaigns.
The country is being hammered by the devaluation of money and ag welfare policies (ethanol mandates and subsidies) that caused farmers to put all their effort into fewer types of crops and depend on government instead of diversification so they won’t have to. The ag business didn’t mind squeezing the non farming people by foisting ethanol on them, which essentially taxed every vehicle with imposed inefficiency and more repair costs, and led to landowners converting land that one grew a multitude of different crops and orchards and herds into corn, corn, and more corn. Instead of calling for government to get out of their affairs, too many cry for more involvement.
I had to switch to Mexican beef in 2014 or 2015. Two years ago the store that sold that went under, bought by Aldis, so after that, beef was mostly off the menu. Dogs eat more beef than some Americans can because international corporations that seem to monopolize the processing biz now figured out they can make bigger profits on pet food than by selling soup bones to the frugal or poor. Remember when oxtail and beef shanks and marrow bone was a cheap go-to to feed a family? Not any more- it is gourmet now , even sweet potatoes and squash are high.
This crap was going on well before Trump tariffs and real immigration enforcement. The problem is government. It is not the solution.
Import tariffs help farmers and manufacturers. That is basic economics.
Who are the 5 largest commercial farm seed and agri chemical companies?
Which companies are the largest controlling meat processing companies in country. There are sbout 4.
There is where your subsidies go you boys whine about.
Again, it will be amusing to watch when people get hungry.
Your as dumb as the rest on here.
Yes right after president meglomaniac realized he screwed up.
He decided to reverse course. A little late.
Trump is as dumb as Biden was. Biden had no mind, Trump lost his.
500,000 ChiComm “students” invading us isn’t what I voted for.
From The Hill. I’ll wait for a more credible source.
He really is a dip shit, isn’t he. And has been for idk how long.
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