As Shutdown Nears Record, Judge Set to Order Emergency Food Aid Funding

A sign advertising food assistance outside the Central Texas Food Bank warehouse
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy Thursday from a rainy and dreary New York City. As the government shutdown nears a record as the longest ever, the Senate headed home for the weekend, and a federal judge signaled that she will step in to require the Trump administration to tap billions of dollars in emergency funds to help cover the cost of monthly food stamp benefits for November. We've got details.

As Shutdown Nears Record, Judge Set to Order Emergency Food Aid Funding

The government shutdown, now in its 30th day, will continue into next week and is likely to break the record as the longest shutdown ever after the Senate adjourned for the week on Thursday afternoon. The record was set by the shutdown that stretched 35 days from December 2018 to January 2019 during Trump's first term.

While there's no chance that the funding lapse will get resolved in the next few days, lawmakers this week reportedly evinced a new sense of cautious optimism that they might find a path to pass one or more packages of fiscal year 2026 spending bills in a bipartisan manner and end the shutdown standoff.

Democrats reportedly will want firm commitments that the White House and Republicans won't look to push through additional rescissions bills or continue mass firings of federal workers. And while some appropriators reportedly are thinking that progress on full-year appropriations could help break the shutdown impasse, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is insisting that Democrats agree to reopen the government before moving on to the full-year spending bills.

"Even if you've got consent it's still going to take a while to move those bills across the floor, so we've got to reopen the government and then we'll have a normal appropriations process," he said.

Judge likely will force SNAP funding: With no concrete deal in the offing, a federal judge in Boston on Thursday indicated that she is likely to order the Trump administration to use a contingency fund to help cover the cost of monthly Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food aid.

Some 42 million Americans rely on those benefits, formerly known as food stamps, and dozens of states had sued the Trump administration over its refusal to tap into the contingency funds to keep the food aid flowing starting on November 1. The Department of Agriculture initially said that it could prevent the benefits from being cut, but it later reversed itself. "Bottom line, the well has run dry," the USDA website said in a notice that blamed Democrats for the shutdown. "At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01."

The lawsuit brought this week by 25 states and the District of Columbia argued that the federal government is legally obligated to continue funding SNAP. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani indicated at a hearing Thursday that she was likely to order the administration to use its roughly $5 billion in reserves to partially pay for the monthly food assistance.

"Congress has put money in an emergency fund, and it is hard for me to understand how this is not an emergency," Talwani reportedly said, adding, "You need to figure out how to stretch that emergency money for now."

Another vote against Trump's tariffs: Before senators left for the weekend, they did vote 51-47 to end the national emergency President Trump declared back on April 2 as he imposed his "Liberation Day" tariffs.

It is the third straight day that the Senate has handed Trump a defeat on his trade agenda, as Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky again joined with Democrats in backing the joint resolution. The Senate voted Tuesday to repeal Trump's tariffs on Brazil and yesterday it voted to end his tariffs on Canada. But those defeats will only be symbolic, as the three measures now head to the House, where they are expected to be ignored. House Republicans have set the chamber's rules to block any consideration of Trump's tariffs until after March 31 of next year.

The Supreme Court will get a chance to rule on the tariffs before then. The justices are set to hear arguments challenging the president's tariffs next Wednesday.

Trump Trims Tariffs on China After Meeting With Xi

Concluding his trip to Asia with a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, President Donald Trump said Thursday he will reduce tariffs on Chinese goods by 10 percentage points in recognition of positive developments in trade talks covering issues such as soybean sales, rare earth exports and fentanyl suppression.

"On the scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12," Trump said on Air Force One. "We've already seen the action on fentanyl, and they're taking very strong action."

The tariff reduction halves a 20% tariff on Chinese goods imposed by Trump as punishment for the country's purported involvement in the production of chemicals used to make fentanyl. The cut lowers the overall tariff on Chinese imports from 57% to 47%.

Trump also reportedly secured a one-year delay in the imposition of new restrictions on the export of rare earths from China to the U.S., as well as a pledge by China to resume its purchases of American-grown soybeans.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China has agreed to purchase 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans per year for three years, starting with about half that amount between now and the end of the year. The relief for farmers may arrive too late to save this year's growing season, though, and Congress has reportedly teed up a rescue package for farmers (see below).

China also won concessions, including a suspension of U.S. sanctions on blacklisted Chinese companies.

Details on the trade deal, however, remain sparse, with Bessent referring to it as a "very substantial framework" rather than a detailed formal agreement. Trump said he would travel to Beijing in April to meet again with Xi, with the Chinese leader coming to the U.S. after that.

A temporary reprieve? The trade agreement marks a significant decrease in tension between China and the U.S. In a statement released after the meeting, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said that Beijing "looks forward to working with the United States to do a good job in implementation and inject more certainty and stability into Sino-U.S. economic and trade cooperation and the world economy."

That said, the framework leaves many questions unanswered and offers no long-term solutions. Trump indicated that the agreement is short-term, saying, "We have a deal - now, every year, we'll renegotiate the deal."

Some observers worry that the short-term agreement simply delays a confrontation between China and the U.S. rather than defusing it. "This is only going to be something that's going to last for a period of months, or perhaps a year or so," Robert Lighthizer, Trump's trade negotiator during his first term, told Bloomberg. "And then we're going to be back there, and have to look at it again."

Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Associated Press that the framework "fits the pattern we've seen all year: short-term stabilization dressed up as strategic progress." Singleton added that both China and the U.S. are looking for ways to manage the tensions between them and avert a crisis, even as "the deeper rivalry endures."

Some critics of Trump's trade strategy argued that China is coming out of the confrontation stronger than ever. "China gave some ground, but the clear dynamic is how Chinese threats have gotten the U.S. to back off a series of proposed restrictions," said Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, per Bloomberg. "Xi has created more safe space for China's economic system and its efforts to achieve greater global leadership."

A Bronx cheer from Dems: Speaking on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed Trump for leaving the country during the government shutdown and accused him of congratulating himself for "cleaning up a mess that he created" while getting little from his aggressive trade war.

"He bowed down to President Xi," Schumer said. "Don't believe Trump. Trump has folded on China. Don't believe his BS. He created the mess, now he's trying to clean up the mess, and then he says, don't I deserve 17 pats on the back? Americans have heard this old song and dance from China and Trump before."

House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries echoed Schumer's critique, saying Trump's trade strategy has raised costs for Americans for no appreciable benefit. "It appears to most reasonable observers that Donald Trump was punked on the world stage by the Chinese Communist Party," Jeffries said at a press conference.

Trump's trade policy is causing some concerns among Republicans, too, es evidenced by the three votes in the Senate this week to repeal many of the president's tariffs. Sen. Rand Paul, one of the Republicans who helped pass the three Senate resolutions this week, said that while he is pleased that Trump is reducing tariffs on China, they remain higher than they were previously. "It still will lead to increased prices," he said.

Number of the Day: $12 Billion

The Trump administration is looking to provide up to $12 billion in an initial round of aid payments to farmers hurt by the president's tariffs, according to Politico. The program is reportedly being held up by the shutdown, but Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota told reporters that it is "all teed up and good to go" once the government reopens.

"USDA and the Office of Management and Budget had previously readied between $12 billion and $13 billion for aid, but officials until recently were still working to finalize how much of that money would be allocated to farmers," Politico's Grace Yarrow and Meredith Lee Hill write. "The funds are all taxpayer dollars from an internal USDA account."

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