Donald Trump is once again abandoning American farmers. Trump’s reckless trade war has devastated soybean producers, and new reporting this week reveals how Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is cashing in while family farmers struggle to keep their finances from falling apart.

In response, DNC People’s Cabinet Member and founder of The Back Forty Will Westmoreland released the following statement: 

“I’ve said it time and time again: Donald Trump’s second term has been devastating to rural America and the farmers and ranchers that feed this country. He can say all he wants that he ‘loves farmers’ and that he’ll ‘never do anything to hurt our farmers,’ but the truth is that his reckless tariffs are causing farmers to suffer as they struggle to figure out how to sell their crops and avoid going bankrupt. Trump has completely walked away from our farmers — and now the chickens are coming home to roost.” 

Key points from the New York Times reporting:

• For the first time in the history of their 76-year-old operation, their biggest customer — China — had stopped buying soybeans. Their 2,300-acre soybean farm is projected to lose $400,000 in 2025. Soybeans that would normally be harvested and exported to Asia are now set to pile up in large steel bins.
• Since President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods in February, Beijing has retaliated by halting all purchases of American soybeans.
• That decision has had devastating repercussions for farmers in North Dakota, which exported more than 70 percent of its soybeans to China before Trump unveiled the new tariffs this year. Unless China agrees to restart its purchases as part of a trade deal, farmers that depend on the Chinese market will be facing steep losses that could fuel farm bankruptcies and farm foreclosures around the United States.
• Those talks are being anchored by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Mr. Trump has put in charge of negotiating and securing a favorable trade deal with China. A win would undoubtedly curry favor with Mr. Trump. But in a strange twist, it could also help Mr. Bessent financially.
• The Treasury Secretary owns thousands of acres of North Dakota farmland, worth up to $25 million. The properties grow soybeans and corn in a state that exports most of its agricultural products to China. The investments have earned Mr. Bessent as much as $1 million in rental income annually, according to his financial disclosure filings.
• To farmers in North Dakota, the forces of high interest rates, high input costs and falling prices are reminiscent of the 1980s farm crisis, which hobbled U.S. agriculture for nearly a decade and hollowed out much of rural America.
• “The stress level is much higher now than it was then,” Jordan Gackle, 44, said in an interview. “If we keep this going for very long, then we are going to see the kind of foreclosures that were happening.” 
• Standing before a field of soybeans a few weeks away from harvest, he added: “All of it is unnecessary. The U.S. was not forced into this by anybody.”
• When Mr. Trump started his second term, his top economic officials promised to protect America’s farming industry as they embarked on tariff fights with China and other nations.
• “Are we going to lose a generation of farmers because of the trade war? I think that’s what we’re fast approaching.”
• The role Mr. Bessent is playing poses a potential conflict of interest given that he owns thousands of acres of farmland in North Dakota.
• Mr. Bessent was supposed to sell his farmland this year as part of a government ethics agreement that requires top officials to divest from assets if their federal work could directly influence the assets’ value.
• The Office of Government Ethics said last month that Mr. Bessent failed to fully comply with an agreement that required him to divest his financial assets.
• “I have never seen as monumental a disruption in agriculture as we’re experiencing now,” said Mr. Wilson, who has been teaching at the university for 43 years. “These are turbulent, turbulent times.”

Under Trump’s watch, family farmer bankruptcies are the highest they’ve been in five years; farm debt increased 5% in 12 months, projecting to hit a record high of $591.8 billion this year; and agricultural economists say crops are already in recession. Trump said he would “never do anything to hurt our farmers,” but in reality, he’s overseeing the worst U.S. trade deficit in agriculture on record, and family farmers are paying the price.