Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday American farmers have been overshadowed and outsold by Argentinian soybean production, and he slammed the Trump administration for agreeing to soften the South American country’s economic hardship.
Argentina recently suspended its 26 percent export tax on soybeans, an opportunity used by China to purchase more than 1 million tons of the crop, according to Reuters.
“Why would USA help bail out Argentina while they take American soybean producers’ biggest market???” Grassley wrote in a Thursday post on social platform X.
“We shld use leverage at every turn to help hurting farm economy,” he added, “Family farmers shld be top of mind in negotiations by representatives of USA.”
In past years, the U.S. has been the No. 1 supplier of soybeans to China, which purchased more than half of all American soybean exports last year.
U.S. farmers have been hit hard by President Trump’s trade war with Beijing, which resulted in a 20 percent tariff on all American imports.
China has bought 51 percent fewer soybeans from the U.S. during the first half of the year, while soybean exports are down by 23 percent overall this year, according to The New York Times.
On Thursday, Trump signaled that he would consider using tariff revenue to ease the burden on American farmers.
“We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers, who are for a little while going to be hurt until it kicks in, the tariffs kick in, to their benefit,” the president told reporters from the Oval Office.
“So we’re going to make sure that our farmers are in great shape because we’re taking in a lot of money,” he added.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Wednesday signaled that a farmers aid package would also be forthcoming amid the export decline of soybeans and other crops.
“We are at a point where we’re looking at the harvest, where we’re looking at our soybean, corn, wheat, sorghum, cotton farmers, who are facing very, very difficult times,” Rollins said at the White House.
“We are currently in conversations here at the White House, across the government, on a farmer aid package. In our current programming right now, we’ve got about $13 billion moving out under ECAP, which is our old farmer payment system, based on losses from last year and the year before,” she added.
Grassley, a family farmer by trade, has been one of the most outspoken advocates for change amid the cutbacks from foreign partners.
“Farmers VERY upset abt Argentina selling soybeans to China right after USA bail out Still ZERO USA soybeans sold to China Meanwhile China is still hitting USA w 20% retaliatory tariff NEED CHINA TRADE DEAL NOW farmers need markets 2boost farm economy,” the Iowa senator wrote in an earlier Thursday post on X.
Iowa farmers rank second nationally in soybean production, which is valued at $4.5 billion, according to the Iowa Soybean Association.
Last year, state soybean farmers produced 598 million bushels, or 13.6 percent of the U.S. total.