DeLauro Demands Pro-Farmer Guardrails in $12 Billion Trade War-Driven Agriculture Bailout

NEW HAVEN —Today, US Representative Rosa DeLauro led 14 members of Congress in a letter to the Trump Administration demanding transparency and fairness for small and specialty crop farmers as the Trump Administration implements its recently-announced $12 billion bailout for farmers and agribusinesses harmed by the President’s trade wars:

“Let us be extremely clear – your administration is opting to use billions in taxpayer dollars to provide relief to farmers whom your incoherent trade policies have harmed in the first place. Farmers who have seen input costs skyrocket and lost export markets because of trading partners retaliating against your own tariff bullying tactics deserve relief – but that relief must go to farmers in need and not to bail out giant agribusinesses and foreign-owned conglomerates,” the members of Congress wrote. 

“During much of your first term, the U.S. lost over 140,000 farms, due in large part to increasing consolidation. Therefore we urge you, in the strongest terms possible, to incorporate the recommendations in this letter into your tariff relief package for farmers to address the failures of the 2018-2019 MFP and to ensure relief gets directly to farmers without incentivizing further consolidation in the agricultural sector and rewarding the biggest players to the detriment of small and medium farms, family farms, and specialty crop farms.”

The text of the letter is available here.

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