2019年，农民从纳税人那里得到了数十亿美元，几乎没有人反对

2019年，农民从纳税人那里得到了数十亿美元，几乎没有人反对

In 2019. the federal government delivered an extraordinary financial aid package to America's farmers. Farm subsidies jumped to their highest level in fourteen years, most of them paid out without any action by Congress.

2019年，联邦政府向美国农民提供了一项特别的财政援助计划。农业补贴跃升至14年来的最高水平，其中大部分是在国会没有采取任何行动的情况下发放的。

The money flowed to farms like Robert Henry's. When I visited in early July, many of his fields near New Madrid, Mo., had been flooded for months, preventing him from working in them. The soybeans that he did manage to grow had fallen in value.

这些钱流向了像罗伯特·亨利这样的农场。7月初我去拜访他时，他在密苏里州新马德里附近的许多田地已经淹了好几个月，无法在那里工作。他种的大豆已经贬值了。

That's when the government stepped in. Some of the aid came from long-familiar programs. Government-subsidized crop insurance covered some of the losses from flooding. Other payments were unprecedented. The U.S. Department of Agriculture simply sent him a check to compensate him for the low prices resulting from the trade war.

这时政府介入了。一些援助来自人们熟悉已久的项目。政府补贴的农作物保险弥补了洪水造成的部分损失。其他的付款是前所未有的。美国农业部只是给了他一张支票，以补偿他在贸易战中获得的低价。

"'Trump money' is what we call it," Henry said. "It helped a lot. And it's my understanding, they're going to do it again."

“我们管它叫‘特朗普钱’，”亨利说。“这帮了大忙。据我所知，他们还会再补贴一次。”

Indeed, a few weeks later, the USDA announced another $16 billion in trade-related aid to farmers. It came on top of the previous year's $12 billion package, for a grand total of $28 billion in two years. About $19 billion of that money had been paid out by the end of 2019. and the rest will be paid in 2020.

事实上，几周后，美国农业部宣布向农民提供160亿美元的贸易相关援助。它是在前一年的120亿美元的一揽子计划之上，两年内总计280亿美元。其中大约190亿美元已经在2019年底支付出去，其余的将在2020年支付。

"President Trump has great affection for America's farmers and ranchers. He knows that they're fighting the fight and that they're on the front lines," Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue told reporters while announcing the aid package.

“特朗普总统对美国农民和牧场主有着深厚的感情。他知道他们在战斗，他们在前线，”农业部长桑尼·珀杜在宣布援助方案时告诉记者。

The announcement aroused little controversy. "I was surprised that it didn't attract more attention," says Joe Glauber, the USDA's former chief economist, who's now a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

这项宣布没有引起什么争议。美国农业部前首席经济学家、现为国际粮食政策研究所高级研究员的乔•格劳伯表示:“我很惊讶它没有引起更多关注。”

Glauber says it deserves more attention, for a whole collection of reasons.

格劳伯说，由于各种各样的原因，它应该得到更多的关注。

For one thing, it's an enormous amount of money, more than the final cost of bailing out the auto industry during the financial crisis of 2008. The auto industry bailout was fiercely debated in Congress. Yet the USDA created this new program out of thin air; it decided that an old law authorizing a USDA program called the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) already gave it the authority to spend this money.

首先，这是一笔巨额资金，超过了2008年金融危机期间救助汽车业的最终成本。国会对汽车业救助计划进行了激烈的辩论。然而，美国农业部凭空创造了这个新项目;它决定，一项授权美国农业部一个名为商品信贷公司(CCC)的项目的旧法律已经授权它使用这笔钱。

"What's unique about this is, [it] didn't go through Congress," Glauber says. Some people have raised questions about whether using the CCC for this new purpose is legal.

格劳伯说:“这件事的独特之处在于，它没有经过国会的批准。一些人质疑将CCC用于这一新目的是否合法。

Glauber sees a risk of "moral hazard" — a situation in which someone is shielded from the consequences of poor decisions. The decision to start the trade war was costly, he says, and the Trump Administration, by tapping the federal treasury, is avoiding the political fallout from that decision. "The sector that is hurt the most, and which would normally complain, all of a sudden it's assuaged by these payments. To me, that's a problem," he says.

格劳伯认为这是一种“道德风险”的风险——在这种情况下，人们被保护起来，不受错误决策的影响。他说，发动贸易战的决定代价高昂，而特朗普政府通过动用联邦财政部，避免了这一决定的政治后果。“受影响最严重的行业通常会抱怨，但突然间，这些付款缓解了这种情况。对我来说，这是个问题。

Also, the payments are quite generous. According to studies by several independent economists, the USDA is paying farmers roughly twice as much as the actual harm that they suffered from the trade war. And the payments are based on production; the bigger the farm, the bigger the payments. Thousands of farmers got more than $100.000 each. According to an NPR analysis of USDA records of payments made through July 2019. 100.000 individuals collected just over 70 percent of the money.

而且，付款也很慷慨。根据几位独立经济学家的研究，美国农业部付给农民的钱大约是他们在贸易战中实际损失的两倍。并且付款是基于生产的;农场越大，支付就越多。成千上万的农民每人得到了超过10万美元。据美国国家公共电台(NPR)对美国农业部截至2019年7月的付款记录进行的分析显示，有10万人获得了超过70%的资金。

The USDA has not yet announced whether it will deliver another round of trade-related payments to farmers in 2020.

美国农业部尚未宣布是否会在2020年向农民发放另一轮与贸易相关的补贴。