DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A federal watchdog says the Trump administration overpaid corn farmers by about $3 billion in federal aid in 2019 and that farmers in the South were paid more for the same crops than elsewhere in the country.
The Government Accountability Office said in a report released Monday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s methodology for computing damage for 2019 was flawed.
The USDA chief economist says the analysis was based on a widely accepted trade model and methodologies, and that USDA economists offered options to policymakers who chose which methods to use to decide how to pay farmers.
