A report found that nearly 100 percent of federal subsidies for farmers doled out by the Trump administration went to white farmers, a revelation that comes as President Donald Trump has been pushing back against allegations that he is openly pushing racism.
A Freedom of Information Act request from New Food Economy found that the Trump administration funneled 99.5 percent of federal subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to white farm operators. The subsidies had been announced by Trump last year in response to his trade war with China, with Trump announcing that $12 billion would be given in direct payments to growers in order to offset the blow they felt from the trade war.
The report found that through May 15, a total of $8.5 billion had been disbursed, primarily to growers of soy, corn, wheat, cotton, and sorghum. A disproportional amount of funding went to white farmers, The Grist noted.
The Grist reported that there were some other striking disparities with how funding was distributed, noting a report from the nonprofit Environmental Working Group that found the vast majority of subsidies went to the wealthiest 10 percent of farmers.
“It seems as though many have turned a deaf ear to America’s small farmers and black farmers alike,” John Boyd, founder and president of the Black Farmers Association, told the House Committee on Financial Services (via The Grist ).
Donald Trump’s shameful disregard of the African American community has now taken aim at our farmers. https://t.co/dXAL1y1jmE @grist @prosaaquino
— NAACP (@NAACP) August 1, 2019
The report comes as Donald Trump is fighting allegations that he has purposely stoked racial animosities with a series of openly racist statements. Trump came under fire for a statement on Twitter that four Democratic congresswomen of color should go back to their “original” countries. Three of the four were born in the United States, while the fourth is a naturalized citizen who emigrated to the United States from Somalia. Trump refused to apologize, ignoring the calls from other Republicans.
Trump later came under fire for another attack on Twitter in which he described one of the nation’s wealthiest majority-black congressional districts as a “rat and rodent infested mess.” As The Inquisitr reported, Trump launched into the attack just minutes after Fox News had made identical arguments about the Maryland district, which contains the city of Baltimore and is represented by one of the longest-serving black congressmen, Elijah Cummings.
Donald Trump has denied all accusations of racism, saying that he is the “least racist” person, and refused the calls from even members of his own party to delete the controversial tweets.
