American farms faced a surge of bankruptcies in 2019, up 20% despite aid efforts from Washington.
The Trump administration allocated $28 billion in aid for farmers affected by his trade war with China in the past two years, but bankruptcies were recorded at the highest level since 2011, according to an American Farm Bureau study.
The bureau said there were 595 Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies last year.
Last year's 20% spike lags only the 33% surge seen in 2010, the year after the recession, the bureau found in its search of a decade of bankruptcy data from U.S. courts.
Farms in Wisconsin generated the highest number of bankruptcy filings last year — 57— followed by Georgia with 41, the bureau reported. Farm bankruptcies were at or above decade-high levels in 10 states: Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wisconsin, CBS News reported.
In addition to retaliatory tariffs from Beijing that hurt soybean exports, U.S. farms were also impacted by President Donald Trump's trade negotiations with Mexico and China.
"The trade wars were salt in an existing wound," Kara O'Connor, government relations director at the Wisconsin Farmers Union, told The Hill.
The White House's “Phase One” accord with Beijing stipulates that China will purchase up to $200 billion in U.S. goods, including an estimated $30 billion to $40 billion in agricultural products like soybeans and pork, offering some relief to American farmers, CBS News noted.
And on Wednesday, President Donald Trump inked the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement that binds the trading partners together for at least 16 years.
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