USDA Boss’s Home State Got Most Trade Aid Per Farmer, GAO Finds
- Democrats attack aid payments as tilted to South, large farms
- Senate Democrats requested probe of $28 billion program
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue
Photographer: Al Drago/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Farmers in U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s home state of Georgia received the highest average payments last year under President Donald Trump’s trade aid program, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released Monday.
Senate Democrats said the findings confirm their long-standing complaints that Trump’s $28 billion trade aid program was unfair to family farmers in the Midwest because farms in the South got higher average payments and a large portion of aid went to bigger farms.