Trump trade bailouts still benefit richest farms
Environmental watchdog says handouts ‘stack the deck against small farmers in favor of the big guys’
A central Illinois farm: while the state is receiving ample if unwanted soybean bailouts from President Trump’s trade war, a new study finds they’re going to the biggest, richest farms. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
An environmental watchdog group is renewing claims that President Trump’s farm bailouts, meant to ease the burden of exports lost in his trade war, are going to the biggest, richest farms, leaving small farmers in the lurch.
The Environmental Working Group, based in Washington, D.C., released a new study Thursday based on the latest Trump tariff handouts distributed between August and the end of October. Working from U.S. Department of Agriculture data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the story determined that the Trump administration distributed $6 billion in payments under the so-called Market Facilitation Program over that time period.
According to the story, “Of the payments since August, the top 10 percent of recipients — the largest, most profitable industrial-scale farms in the country — got half. Three of these farming fat cats got more than $1 million each. Forty-five got more than $500,000 each, and 514 got more than $250,000, which under the program’s rules is supposed to be the limit any single recipient can get.
“The richest of the rich, the top 1 percent of recipients, received 13 percent of payments. That’s an average payment of more than $177,000. But the bottom 80 percent of recipients, including small farmers, got an average payment of $5,136.
“In short,” it concluded, “the administration’s MFP policies stack the deck against small farmers in favor of the big guys.”
The study tracked a total of $14.5 billion in bailouts handed out last year and this year. Trump allocated $12 billion for the program last year and another $16 billion this year, with the $28 billion total more than doubling the Obama administration’s bailout of the auto industry a decade ago during the Great Recession.
The group made similar charges in July, and the new study accused the USDA of making few changes in the program since. The USDA announced last week that the latest “tranche” of bailout payments would begin going out this week ahead of Thanksgiving.
“America’s farm safety net is broken,” said EWG Senior Economic Analyst Anne Weir Schechinger. “Instead of helping small farmers that have been hurt by the Trump administration’s trade war, Trump’s Agriculture Department is wantonly distributing billions of taxpayer dollars to the largest and wealthiest farms.
“Millionaires and even billionaires benefit from these Market Facilitation Program payments, while small farmers are left with only the crumbs,” she added. “Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has said that, when it comes to American farms, ‘the big get bigger, and the small get out,’ and Trump’s MFP payments seem designed to make this repugnant vision a reality.”
The trade bailouts have come under increasingly frequent criticism. Just this week, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin charged handouts were going disproportionately to Southern cotton farmers instead of Illinois soybean farmers who saw trade with China slashed since President Trump launched the trade war last year with tariffs against imported steel.
Illinois Soybean Growers said early in the trade war last year that “producers need trade not aid,” but according to the study data Illinois received $1.7 billion in MFP bailout payments last year and through October this year, with more than $1 billion of that going to soybeans. But $612 million went to “unspecified non-commodity crops,” while just $27.6 million went to hog farmers and $21.2 million to corn growers.
The story recommended that the USDA follow proposals from U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley that didn’t make it into last year’s updated Farm Bill. That would have imposed “a hard cap of $125,000 in payments per person and a restriction that would allow payments only to people who actually farm, like farmers, their spouses, and one manager per farm, regardless of its size.” It charged that the “laughably lax eligibility rules allow cousins, nieces and nephews, and far-flung relatives living in cities, with no real connection to farming, to cash government bailout checks.”
The story pointed out: “When the MFP payouts began last year, the payment limit was set at $125,000, but it was doubled for 2019. Farmers who produce both crops and dairy or hogs are eligible for up to $500,000. No farmer with an adjusted gross income at or above $900,000 a year is supposed to get payments, but that’s waived if at least three-fourths of a big farmer’s income comes from a farm they own.”