Politico‘Here’s your cheque’: Donald Trump’s farm bailouts could leave a wicked hangover
- Experts warn subsidies to blunt pain of coronavirus pandemic and US-China trade war are growing too big and too fast, will be difficult to roll back
- Trump was already spending double what Obama did. Now price is reaching unsustainable levels
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Rayn McCrimmon on politico.com on July 14, 2020.
Government payments to US farmers have surged to historic levels under President Donald Trump as the Agriculture Department floods the industry with cash to stem the financial losses from Trump’s tariff fights and the coronavirus pandemic.
But as agriculture grows more reliant on unprecedented taxpayer support, farm policy experts and watchdog groups warn the subsidies are growing too big and too fast, with no strings attached and little oversight from Congress – and that Washington could have a difficult time shutting off the spigot.
Direct farm aid has climbed each year of Trump’s presidency, from US$11.5 billion in 2017 to more than US$32 billion this year – an all-time high, with potentially far more funding still to come in 2020, amounting to about two-thirds of the cost of the entire Department of Housing and Urban Development and more than the Agriculture Department’s US$24 billion discretionary budget, according to a POLITICO analysis.
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But lawmakers have taken a largely hands-off approach, letting the department decide who gets the money and how much.
The massive payments have been a political boon to Trump in farm country – he tweeted in January that he hoped the money would be “the thing they will most remember” – but risk creating a culture of dependency, as farmers and ranchers work the bonus subsidies into their financial plans when making large, upfront investments in seed, feed and farm machinery.