From today’s Daily News, news of yet another inexplicably corrupt Trump deal. Among my favorite lines here is that no US agency — including the White House — will comment. They just keep referring the questions to another agency, which doesn’t comment.<\/p>\n
Also, let me point out these crooks produce pork products. That is, the same pork that our Department of Agriculture will no longer be inspecting.<\/p>\n
[Apologies: I can’t figure out how to copy and paste Daily News pictures]<\/p>\n
By Chris Sommerfeldt new york daily news<\/em><\/p>\n The Trump administration has forked over more than $62 million \u2014 taxpayer cash that was supposed to be earmarked for struggling American farmers \u2014 to a massive meatpacking company owned by a couple of corrupt Brazilian brothers.<\/em><\/p>\n The Department of Agriculture cut a contract in January to purchase $22.3 million worth of pork from plants operated by JBS USA, a Colorado-based subsidiary of Brazil\u2019s JBS SA, which ranks as the largest meatpacker in the world.<\/em><\/p>\n The bailout raised eyebrows from industry insiders at the time, as it was sourced from a $12 billion program meant for American farmers harmed by President Trump\u2019s escalating trade war with China and other countries.<\/em><\/p>\n But previously undisclosed purchase reports obtained by the Daily News this week reveal the administration has since issued at least two more bailouts to JBS, even as Trump\u2019s own Justice Department began investigating the meatpacker, whose owners are Joesley and Wesley Batista \u2014 two wealthy brothers who have confessed to bribing hundreds of top officials in Brazil.<\/em><\/p>\n Both brothers have spent time in jail over the sweeping corruption scandal.<\/em><\/p>\n Local prosecutors rescinded the Batistas\u2019 plea deals last year after accusing them of withholding evidence. The seedy brothers aren\u2019t allowed to leave Brazil as their complex cases goes to court.<\/em><\/p>\n The Justice Department, meanwhile, is probing JBS for possible violations in the U.S. of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to filings in an unrelated court case reviewed by The News. Reuters reported in December that Justice Department investigators questioned the Batistas in Brazil late last year as part of that investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n Nonetheless, Trump\u2019s Agriculture Department issued $14.5 million in bailout cash for pork products from JBS in February and another $25.6 million earlier this month, totaling more than $62.4 million, according to the purchase reports.<\/em><\/p>\n The sheer size of the payouts stoked outrage from industry watchdogs, who question how subsidizing a deep-pocketed, Brazilian-owned company would help farmers in the American heartland.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhy is the USDA bailing out plants operated by JBS, the largest meat packer in the world, with a program designed to help domestic companies and producers under economic duress?\u201d said Tony Corbo, a lobbyist at Food & Water Watch, noting that the meat giant reported a net income of $273 billion for the first quarter of 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Moreover, JBS appears to have benefited from the trade tensions between Beijing and Washington that the bailouts are supposed to mitigate.<\/em><\/p>\n The company\u2019s exports to China ballooned to more than 24% in 2018, compared with less than 21% the previous year, according to public records, raising questions about the need for the Trump subsidy.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThis company does not seem to be hurting,\u201d Corbo said.<\/em><\/p>\n By comparison, a similar Trump bailout to Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, which is owned by a Chinese firm, was canceled last year amid pushback from members of Congress that money meant for American farmers was ending up in the hands of foreigners.<\/em><\/p>\n JBS declined to comment beyond a statement it issued in January saying that, despite being foreign owned, it is \u201cproud to partner with U.S. family farmers and ranchers, helping to create economic opportunity in hundreds of small, rural towns.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Democrats voiced outrage at the fact that the administration is subsidizing a foreign-owned company controlled by admitted crooks.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear the president is not the least bit knowledgeable about trade policy, nor aware of the chaos his failed approach has caused\u201a\u201d said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who introduced a bill earlier this year restricting the administration\u2019s bailouts to American-owned companies.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe now know that tens of millions of these dollars went to large, multinational corporations \u2014 including Brazilian-owned JBS \u2014 who are racking up profits while family farmers face collapse. That is outrageous.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In addition to payment restrictions, DeLauro\u2019s bill would require the Agriculture Department release explanations for its bailouts.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTheir incompetence and lack of transparency has shown that they cannot be trusted to get this right,\u201d she said.<\/em><\/p>\n A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. The White House referred to the Agriculture Department, which also declined to comment.<\/em><\/p>\n The Agriculture Department has not explained its thinking in bailing out JBS, and it\u2019s unclear whether the administration was aware of the company\u2019s corrupt history before issuing the payments.<\/em><\/p>\n What is known is that the administration was alerted to scandals swirling about JBS over a year before the first bailout.<\/em><\/p>\n In a June 2017 letter addressed to Trump, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, farm trade group R-CALF called on the Justice Department to investigate JBS over possible corrupt business practices in the U.S.<\/em> \u201cThe fact that JBS was allowed to build its political and economic monopoly in the United States with impunity raises the specter that decisions regarding JBS, at nearly every level of government, were based on inappropriate considerations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The JBS bailouts have gained renewed significance in light of the administration\u2019s collapsing trade talks with China and Trump\u2019s repeated pledges to help U.S. farmers.<\/em> China has responded to Trump\u2019s tariffs with retaliatory levies on American exports, harming American farmers of soybean and other crops. Many of those farmer are relying on federal bailouts to stay afloat.<\/em><\/p>\n Including the JBS bailouts, the administration doled out $11 billion in relief payments to farmers hurt in the trade war last year.<\/em><\/p>\n Trump said earlier this week that more aid is on the way. \u201cOur great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what is happening now,\u201d Trump tweeted on Tuesday. \u201cThe Farmers have been \u2018forgotten\u2019 for many years. Their time is now!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From today’s Daily News, news of yet another inexplicably corrupt Trump deal. Among my favorite lines here is that no US agency — including the White House — will comment. They just keep referring the questions to another agency, which … Continue reading
\n\u201cFrom unlawfully securing loans to abusing pension funds to selling tainted beef to bribing government officials to violating Amazon rain forest protection laws to insider trading, the list of inexcusable conduct that JBS allegedly committed is incomprehensible,\u201d R-CALF wrote in the letter.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nTrump maintains China will pay for the tariffs he\u2019s imposing on the country\u2019s exports to the U.S., even as his own top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said in an interview last weekend that American consumers will have to cover much of the bill.<\/em><\/p>\n