At a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week, President Trump didn’t mince words about how much his administration had done to bolster the economic fortunes of farmers.
China, he said — not for the first time — is “paying us billions and billions of dollars a year. I charge them billions, they never paid 10 cents. I gave $28 billion to the farmers, many of them right here, $28 billion, $12 billion and $16 billion, two years.”
The first part of this isn’t true. Trump imposed tariffs on products coming from China, a tax paid largely by American consumers. The second part, though, is true: This tax was then redistributed to farmers who had been targeted by reciprocal tariffs from China. Continue reading.