Trump’s Under-Radar Farm Chief Remakes Agency, Avoids Boss’s Ire

  • Perdue pursues deregulation, business-friendly policies
  • Former Georgia governor shows ‘Trump administration at work’

Sonny Perdue.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

In a town where deregulation is king, Sonny Perdue rules. Rather quietly.

Perdue is the U.S. secretary of agriculture, running an agency with a $140 billion budget and a low profile. His traveling press corps, when there is one, can squeeze into the back of a van. He may be the most aggressive enforcer of President Donald Trump’s pro-business and deregulatory agenda that the fewest Americans have ever heard of.