Corn farmers, for one, were overpaid by about $3 billion. But others got less than their calculated losses, among them soybean, sorghum and cotton farmers.
Farmers got about $23 billion to compensate for trade losses associated with Trump’s tariff battle with China.
The subsidies sparked complaints in Canada that U.S. farmers were gaining an unfair advantage in the North American and export markets. The Canadian government offered no special help.
The report, requested by the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, also found that the way U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed payments led to producers in different regions receiving different payments for the same crop.
Farmers in the South benefited the most, according to the report, while farmers in the Northeast and West received the least.
The Trump administration furthered increased the subsidy gap with billions to compensate for COVID-19. So far there has been no similar accounting report on those payments.
