Trump's farmer bailout flows to city slickers ( and another one coming)

[Demovictory9]

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/418049-trumps-farmer-bailout-flows-to-city-slickers

We’re learning the first details of the Department of Agriculture’s bailout for farmers whose exports were hit by President Trump’s trade war. Department records show that more than 1,000 payments were made to “city slickers” who live in the nation’s largest cities, according to information the Environmental Working Group has obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

So far, the USDA has pledged to provide up to $12 billion to offset the impacts of Trump’s trade war. The first round includes $4.7 billion in direct payments to growers of soybeans, corn, cotton, sorghum, wheat, hogs, dairy, sweet cherries and shelled almonds.


The data includes almost 88,000 payments made through Oct. 31, totaling $356 million. That’s less than one-tenth of the amount the administration expects to make through Trump’s Market Facilitation Program.

But our analysis of this small slice of data reveals that 1,142 bailout payments were made to “farmers” in the nation’s 50 largest cities, including nine residents of San Francisco, four residents of Los Angeles, five residents of New York City and four residents of Washington, D.C.

Based on this sample, it’s reasonable to expect that more than 20,000 big-city “farmers” will ultimately receive bailout payments. That number would be consistent with an earlier EWG analysis, which found that nearly 20,000 people living in the nation’s largest cities received farm subsidy payments in 2017.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/hes-an-architect-in-manhattan-he-got-3300-from-trumps-farm-bailout/2018/11/19/eb079cda-ec14-11e8-baac-2a674e91502b_story.html

He’s an architect in Manhattan. He got $3,300 from Trump’s farm bailout.


Scott Yocom is a 48-year-old architect who lives in Manhattan, works at an office building near Times Square, and has been recently consumed with designing a new central terminal at LaGuardia Airport in Queens.

But late last month, Yocom received a government check worth about $3,300, a payment that came courtesy of a Trump administration program aimed at helping farmers hurt by the U.S.-China trade war.

Yocom said he spends two weeks a year on his family farm in Ohio, but as a part-owner he was eligible for the bailout funds.

Yocom was one of at least 1,100 residents of the 50 largest U.S. cities who has received bailout funds from the Agriculture Department, according to USDA data a watchdog group released Monday. Some of the recipients contacted by The Washington Post said they are closely involved with their farm’s daily operations, while others said they could not recall the last time they had visited.

When the Trump administration announced in August that it planned $12 billion in aid to farmers, it said the money was necessary to help them survive a trade war with China. But the program has been controversial from its inception, and the money going to urban residents — some whose living is only loosely connected to farms — underscores the challenge the administration faces in limiting the bailout to its intended targets.