President Trump announced $12 billion in one-time payments to farmers as they adjust to increased tariffs on exports. Some farmers say even with that help they still face rising health care costs.



AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Today, President Trump announced a $12 billion plan to help farmers across the country. Speaking from the White House, he praised the plan as an example of how his administration is making agriculture a priority, compared to the way it was during the Biden administration.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They hated the farmer. I love the farmer.

CHANG: Well, but at the same time that farmers are struggling with the financial consequences of Trump’s tariffs, they’re also facing more expensive health care. Drew Hawkins with Gulf States Newsroom spoke to some farmers in Louisiana about their concerns over these rising costs, and he joins us now, Hi, Drew.

DREW HAWKINS, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.

CHANG: Hi. OK, so tell us what you’re hearing from some of these farmers.

HAWKINS: Sure thing. So just today, I spoke with a farmer named James Davis. He’s a third-generation row crop farmer in northeast Louisiana. And actually, that region was represented at President Trump’s roundtable today, with a rice farmer sitting right next to him. Davis grows cotton, corn and soybeans, and he says farmers have been hit really hard this year. He says the Trump administration’s tariffs mean they can’t export their commodities because other countries have also placed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, so they can’t sell them and make back enough money. And that also means it can also make it harder to get crop loans the next year.

CHANG: Well, how did Davis respond to the announcement today?

HAWKINS: Well, Davis said that the Trump administration’s tariff relief plan is really crucial.

JAMES DAVIS: It is hard to make crop loans work on paper, so it’s imperative – and very imperative – that the Trump administration get these payments out as soon as possible.

HAWKINS: And Davis says that without what the president did today – which he described as a bailout – many farmers are going to go belly up, is how he put it. They won’t be able to continue farming, and that includes himself who’s – and he’s been doing this for generations.

CHANG: Well, these people that you spoke to across Louisiana, these farmers, I understand that they all expressed concern over rising health care costs, specifically the enhanced premium tax credits, right? Like, that’s the extra help to buy Obamacare health insurance that’s expiring at the end of this month.

HAWKINS: Right.

CHANG: What did you hear about that particular piece of all this?

HAWKINS: Right. So for Davis, who describes himself as a moderate Democrat, he says that those are also crucial because many farmers have been struggling to make ends meet this year. It also means that paying for health insurance is harder, right? And I also spoke to Daniel Rhodes. He runs a small landscaping business near West Monroe, Louisiana, which is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district. Now, Rhodes is a Republican, and he says he supports Speaker Johnson’s leadership except when it comes to health care and the ACA subsidies.

DANIEL RHODES: This was a big one that I really just took the opposite side of the fence and said, like, look, this is a crazy hill to die on to say we’re going to lock up the budget over health care subsidies. Like, man, pick any other thing.

HAWKINS: And you heard Rhodes mention, you know, pick any other thing, right?

CHANG: Yeah.

HAWKINS: He said he’d rather see cuts to military spending or other large-scale government spending, not health care.

CHANG: Well, then what would the people you spoke to say they would like Congress to do when it comes to health insurance costs?

HAWKINS: So in general, the people I talked to, what they want is they want Congress to stop playing politics, is how they put it. Speaker Johnson’s district is very rural, lots of poverty, and a lot of people will be impacted if these subsidies go away without some sort of plan. And I think maybe the best way I can sum it up is a conversation I had with Susie Halley this past weekend. She’s a Republican, she supports President Trump, and she runs a food bank in a place called Farmerville in Union Parish, which is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district. And I asked her if she had a message for Speaker Johnson, and what she said was to fix it. She says people are already struggling to pay health insurance premiums already right now, so if the subsidies go away, it’ll only make it even harder for them.

CHANG: That is Drew Hawkins from Gulf States Newsroom in New Orleans. Thank you so much, Drew.

HAWKINS: Thank you, Ailsa.

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