A photo of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s phone captured by the Associated Press shows a text from a contact named “BR,” presumed to be US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
The message linked to the X account of grain trader Ben Scholl, who has sounded the alarm on what Argentina’s massive bailout means for America’s soybean farmers.
The situation has hobbled America’s $US60.7 billion ($91.81 billion) soybean industry, and there seems to be no concrete solution in sight without a trade deal and China reconfiguring its soybean supply chain.
“US soybean farmers have been clear for months: the administration needs to secure a trade deal with China. China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market,” American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said in a September 24 statement.
“The US has made zero sales to China in this new crop marketing year due to 20 per cent retaliatory tariffs imposed by China in response to US tariffs.”
Trump last Thursday at the White House suggested that his administration may distribute some tariff revenue to American farmers on a temporary basis to help alleviate their financial strain from his policies.
“We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we’ve 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,” Trump said.
It’s the latest frustration for American farmers as they start to bring in this year’s crop.
“We’re always hopeful that those negotiations are moving forward, but yet with harvest here, patience may be running thin,” one Indiana farmer told CNN, describing the result on America’s heartland of inflation, Trump’s trade war and the deportation of the industry’s key migrant workforce.
“This is not your ordinary farm crisis. We call it ‘farmageddon’,” Joe Jennings, CEO of Daitaas Holdings, a Tennessee-based farm tech and software company, told CNN.
