Bailouts · Agriculture
Trade-war farm aid (MFP) (2018–20)
Who: 643,965 farm operations in 2019; most of the money went to soybean, corn, cotton, and wheat growers in the Midwest and Plains. What: Market Facilitation Program payments to offset losses from other countries' retaliatory tariffs during the 2018–19 trade war with China, part of a $28B package that also bought surplus food.
Outcome
Paid out 2018–2020: $8.6B for the 2018 program and $14.4B for 2019.
Legal authority: Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, Section 5 (no new law from Congress).
Who got it: 2018 payments by crop
Where it went: Paid by state, 2018 + 2019 programs (GAO)
50 states; the top five received 43% of the national total.
All other states (30)
| Oklahoma | $273M |
| Louisiana | $269M |
| Alabama | $170M |
| Washington | $163M |
| Montana | $157M |
| Pennsylvania | $131M |
| Colorado | $129M |
| Virginia | $118M |
| New York | $107M |
| Idaho | $99M |
| Maryland | $93M |
| South Carolina | $84M |
| Arizona | $65M |
| Oregon | $58M |
| New Mexico | $49M |
| Delaware | $30M |
| Florida | $29M |
| New Jersey | $17M |
| Utah | $14M |
| Vermont | $9M |
| Wyoming | $9M |
| Massachusetts | $7M |
| West Virginia | $5M |
| Nevada | $5M |
| Maine | $3M |
| Connecticut | $2M |
| New Hampshire | $1M |
| Hawaii | $0M |
| Rhode Island | $0M |
| Alaska | $0M |
Worth knowing
GAO found $163.4M went to recipients with adjusted gross income over $900,000, and the 25 largest operations received $20.6M in 2018 and about $37M in 2019.
The Environmental Working Group, analyzing USDA records, reports that the top tenth of recipients got more than half of the money; that figure is not independently verified here.