Dec. 9, 2025, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government Executive Director Robert Romano today issued the following statement supporting President Donald Trump’s $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program in response to unfair trade practices from abroad:
“President Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to protect American industries including agriculture from unfair trade practices, subsidies, dumping and tariffs from abroad that have hurt U.S. farmers and other industries for decades. For years, trade partners have waged a trade war on the U.S., but we had forgotten how to fight back, until President Trump delivered us the most pro-American trade agenda in modern history. The $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program is an important stage of the Make America Great Again agenda that puts America first by putting American farmers first.
“The program is practically identical to the $28 billion 2018-2019 Market Facilitation Program, and both are authorized by Congress under 15 U.S. Code Sec. 714c, the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, to make direct payments to farmers who are harmed by foreign trade practices and barriers. The Commodity Credit Corporation was established by Congress to ‘Support the prices of agricultural commodities (other than tobacco) through loans, purchases, payments, and other operations.’
“Congress has the long-settled power — now delegated to all presidents — to spend money via the Commodity Credit Corporation it also had the power to create on agriculture and other industries to support the general welfare, to regulate international trade — trade subsidies are used globally to create trade advantage — and ultimately to protect national security by preventing agricultural depressions (historically, those have led to the collapse of governments), and this is one of the manners in which it chose to do so. That is the power of the purse that Congress has authorized presidents to use — and President Trump is now wisely putting the money to use just as he did during his first administration to support his America first trade agenda by increasing domestic supplies. Many aspects of the New Deal were struck down, but spending money wasn’t one of them.
“In practice, the payments should make it easier for farmers to boost production and help bring food prices down in the wake of the Covid and post-Covid expansion of the money supply and simultaneous contraction of global production that fueled the inflation seen since 2021 and 2022 that is still being felt by the American people.
“Like all other countries, we desperately need to boost production, but very similarly, with such a short memory everyone has forgotten the temporary global supply chain crisis price shock caused by the pandemic and the pandemic response that caused the inflation in the first place — except for President Trump. You have all forgotten that shutting down the country has years-long consequences, and this is one of them.
“Americans for Limited Government has long supported a zero-for-zero approach for agricultural subsidies. That is, when other countries stop subsidizing their exports, then maybe we will, too. But there is no agreement to do that and so today subsidies are the cost of doing business. If you just went back to Joe Biden’s tariff levels, all the foreign farm subsidies would still be there, hurting our ability to boost domestic production and bring down prices. Biden was wasting the Commodity Credit Corporation on fighting climate change, and doing nothing to bring down food prices or even advance the U.S. trade position. President Trump, once again, has corrected that problem. They broke it, and he’s fixing it.
“Every day the President’s critics in Congress failingly try to knock down the President’s trade program but some of you obviously don’t know much about it, or do know and are falsely misrepresenting it to the future detriment of all presidents. The President needs to be able to do this when necessary. Just the framing of this issue to serve some failed globalist, liberal, free trade narrative that trade adjustment assistance is somehow a response to U.S. tariffs when it’s the opposite, it’s a response to foreign tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers Congress has long since granted the President the authority to regulate international trade via the Necessary and Proper Clause to counter with tariffs, sanctions, subsidies and everything else that strong, sovereign countries have utilized for centuries, and from his absolute Article II responsibility to engage in foreign discourse, make commercial agreements with other countries and protect the U.S. economy, all of which the Supreme Court would be very wise to uphold in its coming tariff decision. That’s a big one.
“Either way, one of the ways foreign governments exert and will continue to exert trade advantage particularly in agriculture is via subsidies. President Trump is restoring the U.S. trade position globally versus our competitors, and, yes, there’s this thing called competition. America forgot how to compete and that the U.S. has a strong interest or any interest at all for that matter in defending our economic borders and our producers against unfair foreign trade practices. We must be able to control the domestic food supply and push prices down. No serious person would object to that. It is vitally important. We’d still be living in the stone age if it wasn’t for agriculture, and in the modern world, cheap food is the best anti-poverty program ever devised.
“President Trump’s commitment to agriculture is one of the ways farmers will be able to afford to boost domestic production and reduce food prices. Every day the President’s critics all complain about inflation but then mindlessly work against the policies that increase supplies and bring down food prices. It’s called supply and demand. With $12 billion for farmers, President Trump is by definition boosting domestic food production to bring down prices and you’re all senselessly wringing your hands about prices. Make up your minds already. Boost production and supplies or not? Everyone against boosting production is pro-inflation. Thankfully, President Trump is teaching the next generation of leaders how to run a country. You can thank him later.”
For media availability contact Americans for Limited Government at media@limitgov.org.
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