First, tariffs. Then, bailouts. We’ve seen this show before and a rerun is now airing.

As everybody knows by now, President Trump is rolling out protectionist tariffs much more aggressively than during his first term. Trump has so far imposed new tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, automobiles, and many other goods. A slew of additional tariffs is coming this month. On the whole, Goldman Sachs estimates that the average tax on imports will rise from about 2.5% at the start of the year to around 15% by the time all of Trump’s tariffs are in place.

Many nations facing new taxes on the goods they ship to the United States will retaliate by raising their own tariffs on US products or shifting to suppliers in other countries. That’s what happened during Trump’s first trade war in 2018 and 2019, and it’s happening again in 2025.

American farmers bore much of the pain from retaliatory trade actions during Trump Trade War I, and they’re in the crosshairs again during Trump Trade War II. So Trump is likely to do what he did the first time around: offer bailouts to farmers to counteract the damage caused by his policies.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is already telling farm communities that the Trump administration “will work around the clock to ensure that we have the programs in place to do what we did the last time.” She’s referring to a bailout program that ultimately paid farmers $23 billion in 2018 and 2019 to compensate for losses they endured from declining sales in foreign markets.

Trump is nonchalant about farmers’ predicament. On March 3, he posted on social media, “To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States … Have fun!”

His exhortation was unconvincing. “Farmers are frustrated,” Caleb Ragland, a Kentucky farmer and president of the American Soybean Association, answered in a statement. “Tariffs are not something to take lightly and ‘have fun’ with. Soybean farmers still have not fully recovered market volumes from the damaging impacts of the 2018 trade war, and this will further exacerbate economic hardship on our farmers.”

Trump’s logic of replacing foreign demand with higher domestic sales doesn’t apply to many agricultural products. The United States is a net exporter of soybeans, sorghum, and pork, for instance. Those were the three agricultural product categories hurt most by the first Trump trade war. Since those farmers produce more than America consumes, Trump would somehow have to convince Americans to eat a lot more bacon, tofu, and baked goods for his concept to pan out.