Over 11,000 Texas Farmers Sign Up for Tariff Relief
Texas farmers have been hit hard by the effects of the White House led tariffs and trade disputes with China. According to the Waco Tribune, cotton-farmers in the Lone Star State have shouldered the brunt of this impact - as China buys about half of the cotton grown in Texas.
By last week's deadline to file, more than 11,000 Texas farmers had applied for government assistance because they were “suffering from damages due to unjustified trade retaliation." According to the report, farmers in the state have already received $72 million in the payouts designed to soften the blow of China's refusal to by Texas' agricultural goods. Nationwide, 864,000 farmers have applied for the bailouts - receiving a whopping $8 billion in payments.
Those numbers will most likely go up. Many applications were submitted during the partial government shutdown, and are still being processed. The Market Facilitation Program was instituted to help protect producers of corn, cotton, dairy products, hogs, shelled almonds, sorghum, soybeans, fresh sweet cherries and wheat in the United States.