As expected, House Democrats included funding for trade war payments to farmers and ranchers in a stopgap funding bill to keep the government running until Nov. 21. The bill, released on Wednesday, would require the USDA to submit a detailed list of the trade war payments and an analysis of damage suffered by the agriculture sector.
The White House sent $8.6 billion to producers in so-called Market Facilitation Program payments for 2018 losses and offered up to $14.5 billion for trade damage this year. House Appropriations chairwoman Nita Lowey circulated a draft last week that omitted the money requested by the administration, but relented early this week when farm state lawmakers said the funds were essential.
Section 119 of HR 4378, the short-term bill, would replenish funding for the Commodity Credit Corp., the USDA agency that disburses the Trump tariff payments. It directed the USDA to report by Oct. 31 on all MFP outlays, including “state-by-state, commodity-by-commodity, including specialty crops, analysis of the trade damage caused by retaliatory tariffs and separately by non-tariff trade barriers, including dumping, on U.S. agricultural producers, and an accounting of any commodity purchases made from substantially foreign-owned companies or their subsidiaries.”
A summary of the stopgap bill is available here.
The text of HR 4378 is available here.