Trump Administration
Floor Speech
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Mr. WELCH. Will the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. WELCH. How are you managing to do this? You have been up all night and your staff too. It is really, really quite extraordinary.
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Mr. WELCH. Will the Senator yield for another question? I will ask another one.
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Mr. WELCH. All right.
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Mr. WELCH. I will make it a longish one, but I want to join my colleagues in expressing our gratitude for this incredible physical effort that reflects not just your intellectual engagement but your compassion and the care you have for Oregonians, whom you have been serving so well for so long. It has really been, just for me, a wonderful opportunity to be a new Member of the Senate, along with Senator Schiff, who I know feels the same way to be working with somebody like the Senator from Oregon, who is just honest and true and totally grounded in his commitment to the people whom he serves and the Constitution that all of us serve. It is just a gratifying experience for us to be your colleagues.
You know, one thing that I wanted to talk about was tariffs and who has the authority to impose tariffs and what the implications are, because what I am seeing is that our farm economy is really being devastated by tariffs.
Let's talk about Midwest farmers. They are proud folks, like the dairy farmers in Vermont, and they used to have markets. The thing they loved to have is purchasing power that they earned by tilling the land and having family farm operations that would be passed on from generation to generation. They really didn't want a lot of government involvement or interference. They wanted to be able to grow their crops. And what I am seeing is that the Trump administration's embrace of tariffs has resulted in the total collapse of the markets that used to be available to our Midwest farmers, including the China market.
You know, last year, our farmers sold about 30, 40 percent of their soybean crops to China. They haven't sold a bushel, OK? They haven't sold a bushel. There is now talk, by Trump, of taking revenue from the tariffs to pay farmers a subsidy. I get it--the farmers need it--but wouldn't it make more sense to let farmers sell the crops that they grow rather than have a tariff that prohibits them from selling to markets they have had?
Then the second thing I noticed--and I really am interested in this because rural America is the heart of America, you know, with the wonderful community values folks have--family values-- hard work, service. We have got a billionaire who is the Secretary of the Treasury. In my understanding--I don't know how. I guess, if you are a billionaire, you own lots of things in lots of different places, but he, apparently, owns lots of farmland in the West. But his major, new initiative is to take $40 billion of our money to bail out the Argentine peso.
So maybe you can explain to me how that is going to help our Midwest farmers--a stronger, bailed-out peso from Secretary Bessent--and how the Bessent policy on tariffs is going to give any kind of lifeline to those family farms that have been so much a part of our heritage, who do so much for the well-being of our country, and whose prosperity is so essential to the well-being of our whole country.
Farmers like to feed people. They like to work hard. They don't want a bailout, and they don't want a handout. We have got the tariff policies that are wrecking the markets, and then we have got a bailout that is going to Argentina that is going to further erode the ability of our farmers to sell their product because, oh, by the way, the Argentinian farmers are now going into the markets we are helping them create that have been opened up as a result of denying access to those markets for our Midwest farmers.
So perhaps you could explain to me how this makes sense.
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Mr. WELCH. I think I know the answer.
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Mr. WELCH. Will the Senator yield again?
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Mr. WELCH. So here is my question:
Is this really a bailout for the financiers on Wall Street who bought this debt at 20 cents on the dollar but may get paid $1 on the dollar or is this just flat-out enrichment? They didn't lose. They are winning as other people suffer. So is this really a bailout or just a flat-out ``Hey, fellas. Here is $40 billion. I love you, Donald Trump''?
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Mr. WELCH. Well, I appreciate that.
I yield to the Senator.
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