Durbin renews charge against cotton bailouts
Illinois soybean farmers slighted in Trump trade handouts, says senator
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, seen at the recent Women’s March in Chicago, says farm bailouts are going unfairly to Southern cotton farmers, at the expense of Illinois soybean growers. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin is renewing charges that President Trump’s farm trade bailouts are going unfairly to Southern cotton farmers and not to soybean growers truly hurt by the president’s tariff war with China.
“Illinois soybean farmers need this trade aid because of the financial losses they’ve incurred,” Durbin said in statement. “But once again (the U.S. Department of Agriculture) has overcompensated Southern cotton growers, whose market losses are small and whose prices have gone up, with more aid on a county-by-county basis than Illinois’s soybean farmers.”
Durbin originally accused the USDA and the Trump administration of skewing the handouts, under what’s known as the Market Facilitation Program, last fall, and he repeated the charge Friday after the final installment of the bailouts went out.
Trump launched his trade war with China almost two years ago in a bid to revive the U.S. steel industry, and he touted gains that summer at the U.S. Steel Granite City Works. But even then he admitted China was targeting American farmers with retaliatory tariffs in response. As a result, he authorized $12 billion in so-called MFP payments in 2018, and another $16 billion last year.
Many Trump critics have pointed out that the $28 billion farm bailout more than doubled the auto-industry bailout under President Obama a decade ago in the midst of the Great Recession, and that the need for Trump’s handouts was brought on by his own rash actions, not a nationwide economic downturn. The Illinois Soybean Association expressed initial reluctance to accept the handouts, saying farmers need “trade, not aid.”
Now Durbin is renewing charges that those payments are going to cotton farmers in Southern and Western states that tended to favor Trump in the 2016 election, at the expense of Illinois soybean farmers who’ve borne the brunt of the trade fallout.
According to a news release put out by Durbin’s office: “The USDA trade aid ranges from $15 to $150 per acre, with Illinois ranging from $87 (Piatt County) to $50 (Jo Daviess County) or an average of $69 per acre. By comparison, cotton counties in Georgia average $75 per acre; in Arizona, $79 per acre; in Mississippi, $87 per acre; and in Alabama, $94 per acre. Payments in more than 35 Alabama and Mississippi counties far exceed the top Illinois payment, with some cotton growers receiving $150 per acre, double the Illinois average.”
Critics have cited that Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is a former Georgia governor. Ben Orner of Capitol News Illinois reported in the Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday that the top five states receiving MFP handouts were Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas — all won by Trump in 2016 — while Illinois, the nation’s top soybean producer, placed sixth.
Orner added that the third and final round of MFP bailouts would go largely to Midwest soybean states overall, but that Southern cotton states are still receiving the most per acre.
The release added: “There are approximately 16,000 cotton farms nationwide growing on 12 million acres whose two-year market losses in China are $54 million, or just a 6 percent drop. There are approximately 303,000 soybean farms growing on roughly 80 million acres (including more than 36,000 Illinois farms) whose two-year market losses in China are $9 billion, a 75 percent drop.”
Durbin pointed out that the terrible weather last year, including spring floods that delayed planting and an early snow that halted the harvest, made things even more dire for Illinois soybean growers.
“Our farmers are coming off one of the toughest years in memory, and the USDA’s formula for trade aid payments adds insult to injury,” he said. “Under President Trump, farmers last year received 40 percent of their income from the government. That’s because the Trump administration’s trade approach with China seriously damaged major export markets for Illinois and possibly for years to come.”