By Josh Zumbrun 

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration announced a $16 billion aid package for the U.S. farm sector, which primarily will make direct payments to farmers to offset losses resulting from the trade conflict with China.

The administration has moved to shore up American agriculture after a breakdown in talks earlier this month between Washington and Beijing. Amid expectations that American farmers will be hindered selling crops to China's 1.4 billion-person market, commodity prices sank to their lowest level in more than 10 years.

President Trump directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create the program "because he knew farmers would bear the brunt of this lack of trade deal with China once again," said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. "Farmers themselves will tell you they'd rather have trade than aid," he said, but in the absence of a deal "they'll need some support."

The program is a reprise of a similar initiative in 2018 which had authorized $12 billion in funding. In first tweeting the idea of a farm-aid package this year, Mr. Trump had proposed a program to use tariff revenue to buy crops and distribute them internationally for humanitarian purposes. The USDA program won't not use tariff revenue directly, nor will it have an international humanitarian component.

Write to Josh Zumbrun at Josh.Zumbrun@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 23, 2019 12:38 ET (16:38 GMT)