President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development could hurt a surprising group: American farmers.
As part of his broad slashing and freezing of federal spending, Trump froze food purchases for foreign aid through USAID last month before some waivers were issued for existing contracts. Over 40% of the food distributed through USAID programs is purchased from farmers in the U.S., amounting to about $2 billion per year.
“President Trump and his team need to turn this stuff back on. You know, it’s one thing to find a few programs that are bad or being mismanaged, but just a blanket turn off impacts our farmers,” Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS.
Though Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued waivers for some forms of global aid, including food, so far that hasn’t necessarily meant the groups involved have received the help they’d been promised. And a report this week from the USAID inspector general noted that the uncertainty about the future of USAID, as Trump and Elon Musk work to gut the agency, put “more than $489 million of food assistance at ports, in transit, and in warehouses at risk of spoilage, unanticipated storage needs, and diversion.”
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Agency staff identified more than 500,000 additional metric tons of food “currently at sea or ready to be shipped” sourced from American farmers that was eventually released. But the long-term existence of these programs remains in flux as USAID faces an existential crisis, and farmers need stability now, members of both parties said.
“This food is going places, and I love it. I mean, it’s packaged with an American flag printed on it,” Rep. Glenn Thompson, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS. “It’s good diplomacy, and quite frankly, if we can address food insecurity, it reduces the likelihood of us having to do any intervention abroad if there’s terrorism or war.”
Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, posted on X after the freeze that “U.S. food aid feeds the hungry, bolsters our national security & provides an important market for our farmers, especially when commodity prices are low.” A day later, he celebrated the State Department allowing food aid already sitting in ports to resume being shipped before it went bad.
Democrats from rural states likewise pushed back on the broad freeze.
“We have folks who participate proudly in that program and are extremely distressed about the sudden abandonment,” Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin told NOTUS. Baldwin’s state of Wisconsin, a farm-heavy swing state, had the tightest presidential win margin in 2024.
“It’s just reckless. We’re leaving food to rot instead of be eaten,” Sen. Peter Welch, a Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS. “Our farmers provide the food that feeds the world. We cut off aid, we shrink markets for our farmers to do good.”
Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement: “President Trump is ensuring that taxpayer-funded programs align with the national interests of the United States, including protecting America’s farmers. He will cut programs that do not align with the agenda that the American people gave him a mandate in November to implement and keep programs that put America First.”
And a Department of Agriculture spokesperson said: “The Trump Administration rightfully has asked for a comprehensive review of all contracts, work, and personnel across all federal agencies. Anything that violates the President’s Executive Orders will be subject for review.”
Agriculture industry groups told The Washington Post they have contributed to aid food programming and support it, from industry heavyweight American Farm Bureau Federation to U.S. Wheat Associates. Some groups issued concerns to The Post that dismantling USAID’s staff would make administering the program in the future more difficult.
Virginia Houston, director of government affairs at the American Soybean Association, primarily interacts with Food for Peace, USAID’s flagship international-food-assistance program. Aid isn’t the largest market for soybeans, but she said it generates about $110 million dollars annually and provides some much needed stability during a hard time.
“Food for Peace is one more market, and especially at a time where some of our other markets are maybe more vulnerable to disruption, possibly due to tariffs or supply chain disruptions,” Houston said.
The largest export market for American soybean farmers is China, she said, a country currently seeing 10% across-the-board tariffs instituted by the Trump administration. Another is biofuels, which is heavily dependent on the renewable fuel standard and can fluctuate.
And while the basis of food aid is to support hungry recipients, she said it can lead to real financial benefit for the ag sector.
“Food is the basis of trade. Two former food aid recipients, Japan and Korea, are now two of our largest export partners for U.S. soybeans, and they’re two very large national-security allies,” Houston said. Long-term investments in food-aid programs can be “a long-term play to a major trading partner,” she said. “That’s our hope with any country that we work with, that one day they will be a stable trading partner for U.S. agriculture.”
Some Republicans who support Food for Peace introduced legislation Tuesday that would move oversight of the program to the Department of Agriculture. While ostensibly, members that signed onto the legislation argued the USDA was a more logical resting spot for agriculture aid programming and the agency was more qualified to handle the food supply chain, members NOTUS spoke to didn’t deny another function: potentially safeguarding the program during particular upheaval at USAID.
“It’s a good program, and it’s something that we need to continue. If it would help to keep it going, to put it into an agency that people have more confidence in, then I’m all for that,” Rep. Dan Newhouse, an early co-sponsor, told NOTUS.
Supporters of the bill that NOTUS spoke with felt very strongly that Food for Peace was crucial to maintain for the agriculture industry.
“It’s a twofer. It helps agriculture, helps our farmers and it advances U.S. policy if it’s done right. And we want to make sure it’s done right,” Republican Sen. John Hoeven, a member of the Agriculture Committee and a lead sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, told NOTUS.
“I don’t support any attack on Food for Peace,” Rep. Thompson, another co-sponsor. “I’ve always supported, in appropriations, pushback on any attempt to cut it.”
But Hoeven and Thompson didn’t necessarily oppose Trump’s blanket freezes, despite their support for a program that’s faced uncertainty as part of them. Thompson said they were “a temporary thing. Part of it is, it’s been grasped for political purposes.”
“Maybe I would look at doing things a little differently, perhaps like in the spending freeze decision, but I’m not in charge,” Newhouse said. But he also expressed strong support for “[looking] at every line item. We have to make sure that every dollar that goes out the door is something that is a priority.”
There are nonetheless some Republicans who are supportive of Trump’s agenda, even if it means a pause in programs like Food for Peace.
“I think our American farmers are sophisticated enough to know that they don’t want their tax dollars spent feeding terrorists. And USAID is a pit of vipers,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, told NOTUS. “If you look at things in the hierarchy, making sure we’re not feeding terrorists is a high priority, and our farmers are going to be OK. The Trump administration loves our farmers nearly as much as I do.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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