Friedberg @ 01:16:35Inconclusive
politicseconomy
If a new round of U.S. tariffs against China is implemented under a future Trump administration, China will respond by significantly tariffing or sharply reducing imports of U.S. agricultural products, forcing the U.S. federal government to again make large transfer payments (on the order of tens of billions of dollars) to U.S. farmers.
there will be, as there was in the first Trump presidency, very likely very large transfer payments made to farmers, because China is very likely going to tariff imports or stop making import purchases altogetherView on YouTube
Explanation
Key parts of Friedberg’s scenario have already occurred, but the decisive "tens of billions" in new tariff‑driven farm transfers are not yet clearly in place, and Trump’s second term is still in its first year.
- A future Trump administration did in fact impose a new round of broad tariffs on China in 2025, including a 10% baseline tariff on almost all imports and a higher “reciprocal” rate on China of about 34%, on top of earlier 2025 measures that doubled tariffs on Chinese goods from 10% to 20%. (en.wikipedia.org)
- China responded exactly as predicted in direction: it imposed additional 10–15% retaliatory tariffs on a wide range of U.S. agricultural and food products (covering hundreds of tariff lines) and also suspended soybean import licenses for several U.S. firms and halted some U.S. log imports, clearly targeting U.S. agriculture. (fas.usda.gov)
- However, while there are substantial government payments to farmers in 2025, most are from pre‑existing or broadly framed programs (e.g., a $10 billion Emergency Commodity Assistance Program for low prices, of which over $8 billion has been paid, plus large disaster payments projected at about $35.7 billion) rather than a clearly identified, new, tariff‑specific bailout on the scale of the 2018–19 trade‑war programs. (reuters.com)
- A new trade‑related bailout in the $10–15 billion range has been reported as planned, and over $3 billion in CCC‑funded aid tied to trade disputes is being released, but reporting as of late October–November 2025 treats these packages as pending or partial; analysts describe tens of billions in tariff‑funded farm aid as a likely outcome if the trade war continues, not as an accomplished fact. (reuters.com)
Because (1) the tariff and Chinese‑retaliation components of the prediction are already borne out, but (2) the scale and explicit tariff‑linkage of new farm transfer payments have not yet clearly reached “tens of billions” attributable to the 2025 China episode, and (3) Trump’s term runs through January 2029, it is too early to say definitively whether the full prediction has come true. Hence the result is classified as inconclusive rather than right or wrong at this time.