Trump urges tractor makers to cut costs as vexed farmers get aid

President Donald Trump pressured farm-equipment manufacturers to drop prices for tractors as he announced $12 billion in farmer relief, his latest efforts to address Americans’ concerns about shaky economic conditions under his leadership.

Trump said Monday that his administration would give companies such as Deere & Co. permission to “take off a lot of the environmental restrictions that they have on machinery,” blaming them for driving up costs for farmers.

“They’re going to have to reduce their prices because farming equipment has gotten too expensive, and a lot of the reason is because they put these environmental excesses on the equipment, which don’t do a damn thing except make it complicated,” the president said.

Voters have grown restless with Trump’s stewardship of the economy, as household budgets are crunched by persistent inflation and a weakening job market. That extends to agricultural producers, a group of reliable Trump supporters who have been hit hard by his tariff regime and low crop prices.

Trump entered office pledging to lower consumer prices and boost the nation’s wealth, and mounting public sentiment that he hasn’t lived up to those promises poses a risk for Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. The president has dismissed affordability concerns as a Democratic “con job” but has recently taken steps to convince voters he’s focused on the problem.

That includes a planned trip to battleground Pennsylvania on Tuesday to tout his economic agenda as well as executive actions, like an order targeting alleged price fixing in the food industry.

Still, Trump sought to blame his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, for the situation, saying “we inherited a total mess from the Biden administration.”

The aid package announced Monday includes as much as $11 billion in one-time payments to crop farmers under the Agriculture Department’s newly designed Farmer Bridge Assistance program. The remaining funds are reserved for crops not covered under the FBA, according to a White House official. Some $1 billion is being held back to assess needs of growers of specialty crops, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

Farmers with an average adjusted gross income below $900,000 for the 2022-2024 tax years are eligible and will have until Dec. 19 to submit acreage reporting data to determine their payment amount, according to another official. Rates will be released by month’s end. The administration expects to distribute the assistance no later than the end of February 2026, though it could come earlier, the person said.

Trump said that the money for relief was coming from a “small portion” of tariff revenue. But an official said ahead of the announcement that the funds were authorized under the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act and will be administered by the Farm Service Agency.

The long-awaited farmer relief is a tacit acknowledgment that the president’s sweeping global tariffs have burdened some American businesses, including farmers, by contributing to price pressures and shrinking export markets.

Administration officials, though, have publicly blamed other factors for the problems facing farmers, such as low commodity prices and what they say was Biden’s failure to enforce a soybean purchasing target that the US and China agreed to during Trump’s first term.

China cut off purchases of US soybeans amid the two countries’ trade war earlier this year. Beijing has ramped up buys as part of a truce between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck in October.

“I spoke with President Xi very recently and I think he’s going to do even more than he promised to do,” Trump said, later cautioning it was “not a commitment.”

“I asked President Xi if he could even up it, and I think he’ll do that,” Trump said. “But the soybean farmers are quite happy.”

Current quantities are still short of what American farmers were hoping to ship abroad, though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said China is on track to meet its target of 12 million tons by the end of February.

Monday’s announcement echoes financial support Trump offered to farmers during his first term, when the US and China were also locked in a trade war. Farm-state lawmakers in the president’s own party have repeatedly pleaded with the White House to address the economic pain facing agricultural producers.