USDA overpaid corn farmers in 2019 by around $3 billion for impacts from former President Donald Trump’s trade policies, in part because the agency over-estimated the value of lost export business, according to U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). While Market Facilitation Program (MFP) payments to corn farmers exceeded USDA’s final estimated damages from the trade war, soybean, sorghum and cotton farmers received less than the estimated trade damage, the report found.
GAO recommended USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist (OCE) be more transparent in its methodology process, as well as revise its processes for assessing the baselines by which farmers are granted aid. OCE disagreed with the report’s findings and said its team did their job, that GAO’s recommendations should not be aimed at OCE and that the problem was with policy decisions in which it was not involved, according to an Oct. 21 letter it sent to GAO.
