Well here we go again. The farmers are again being paid to dump the food, wasting millions of tonnes of Soybeans. Trump is paying 12 billion dollars of state money to large farmers, for food that will be destroyed.
The justification for this is that China only bought 2.7 million tonnes of soybeans this year, after promising 12 million, in a large purchase planned by Biden and his government. Trump has alienated China so badly, with 45% tariffs the current number, they didn’t buy the beans this year.
The last time Trump was president the farmers regularly received tens of billions of dollars, and the dumping of soybeans was also practiced in the pandemic.
It is a prime example of overproduction; the soybeans are useful, they are good quality. But due to social conditions, they cannot be sold, rather, the bourgeoisie is sort of paying for them to be dumped. Apparently flooding the market with cheap soybeans is also not possible.
They have about 2 weeks to purchase the beans, before they get dumped. It seems physically impossible to move the about 10 million metric tonnes to China they were expected to purchase. In an event of overproduction, inability to plan ahead for this calamity, the direct cause Trump’s tariffs, food otherwise consumable is all a loss.
We still to this day have famine, often in war torn countries. Gaza is hungry, but the beans are unsaleable. Clearly overproduction is a social problem, not a physical one. It is occurring due to the style of government; the capitalist one.
At this point it looks like the bourgeois will not even be buying the beans, rather just issuing checks to big farmers. Checks were issued last time based on acreage, the more acres, the more welfare.
“The highest per-acre payments will be paid to rice farmers, who could receive $132.89 an acre; cotton farmers, at $117.35 an acre; and oat farmers, at $81.75 an acre. Meanwhile, farmers are eligible for a payment of $44.36 per corn acre, $30.88 per soybean acre and $39.35 per wheat acre. The payments are calculated using 2025 planted acres, cost-of-production data, and market conditions, USDA said.”
Reuters 12 31 2025
This has yet to change. Small farmers will be selling their farms, when their crop is unsaleable due to overproduction. This will concentrate ownership of land further in the hands of the large landowners, who are all Republican bourgeoisie.
The 12 billion dollars comes from part of the surplus value sectioned off for taxes. It is created in the labour process; wage labor is what is paying for this 12 billion dollars. But to the capitalist this money is his property,as it was a deduction from his surplus value, gained through his control of the means of production, in this case the land.
It is a crisis of overproduction, due to a glutted market for soybeans. The only thing different this time is Trump is the cause of the crisis, as he had to tariff China massively, mostly to protect non metric industries like automobile production, which would have a tough time competing against Chinese EV’s. They cost half as much as a Detroit car, or a Muskmobile Tesla. They are not selling them to workers, they are luxury cars. Honda is selling a Chinese EV this year, the Prologue. I was at the Honda dealer recently and asked about Honda EV’s. I was told about the Prologue. I asked if it was Chinese produced. The answer from the dealer was yes.
The bourgeoisie should have remembered the last time, in Trump‘s first term, when tariffs started with solar panels (30%) and washing machines (20%), then expanded under Section 301 to hit steel, aluminum, and eventually a broad range of Chinese products with 25% tariffs. That time they bought the soybeans elsewhere too. The beans were probably dumped the first time Trump pulled a stunt like tariffing China. The farm subsidies of tens of billions also got flowing under Trump in his first term.
It should be obvious there is no gain for the worker here. It is not like Trump is even paying for land, as in a purchase, nationalization of land with a price tag. Instead the 12 billion dollars will go to mostly large landowners, who will use it to pay wages, cementing their control over the labor process on land itself. He just doles it out, and it is the large landowners who pull Trump’s puppet strings.
Not even a year into Trump’s presidency there is already an economic crisis, this time a glutted market for soybeans resulting in millions of tonnes of food being destroyed. Overproduction occurred, and now big pockets are required to keep the landowners happy. They all know Trump represents the gravy train, and regardless of how bad decisions regarding economics go, they are insured through him if their crops fail. They even went along with the tariffs, at least until Chinese tariffs in line with Trump’s made American soybeans unsaleable. Will they keep supporting him if it means economic failure for their crop?
How many more failed years of crops will there be until there is nationalized land? Clearly the USDA planning is not working. It failed in Trump’s first term, when he pulled the same thing, big tariffs on China, resulting in counter tariffs, and overproduction. A more rational planning process, especially regarding the effects of large tariffs on markets, was required. Instead we have failure, another lost year, with Trump to blame for the fiasco.
Nicholas Jay Boyes
Milwaukee Wisconsin
American Democratic Republic
12 9 2025
edit 1 9 2025
Ecological Era 