Chinese company eligible for trade war bailout
Pork producer is one of largest in the U.S.
A Chinese-owned pork producer is eligible for federal payments under President Donald Trump’s $12 billion farm bailout, a program that was established to help U.S. farmers hurt by Trump’s trade war with China.
Smithfield Foods, a Virginiabased pork producer acquired in 2013 by a Chinese conglomerate now named WH Group, can apply for federal money under the bailout program created this summer, said Agriculture Department spokesman Carl E. Purvis.
JBS, a subsidiary of a Brazilian company by the same name, is also eligible to apply for the federal money. The two companies are the biggest pork producers in the United States, according to the National Pork Board, a quasigovernment agency.
The Agriculture Department said in August that, as part of a broader bailout, it will buy $1.2 billion of surplus food from farmers for distribution in food banks across the country, including about $560 million in planned pork purchases. The administration has billed the plan as an effort to shield farmers from retaliatory tariffs from China.
But the possibility of money flowing to foreign-owned firms underscores the difficulty of trying to craft government programs that benefit only domestic firms. The international reach of companies makes it hard to ensure that federal dollars stay in U.S. hands, regardless of their intended target.
The bailout program has also angered smaller hog producers, who expressed frustration that it appears likely to help large, international farms that already dominate the U.S. pork market.
“It’s just going to help the big boys, like JBS and Smithfield,” said Chris Petersen, 63, who owns a few hundred hogs on a farm in north-central Iowa. “I’m very concerned because of the political power and the power of money and big corporations. The taxpayers should be up in arms over this.”
In a statement, Smithfield Foods declined to say whether it has applied to participate in the purchase program.
A JBS spokesman also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which is administering the purchase program, said the products it will be purchasing are “100 [percent] American produced.”
In a separate statement, the USDA’s central communications office said the agency could not control whether federal funding given to American subsidiaries would increase the profitability of its Chinese owners.