Last updated on 2015-12-21
South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture Lucas Lentsch thinks the Trans-Pacific Partnership will help South Dakota farmers by further opening foreign markets for our ag exports. Ag columnist Alan Guebert says Lentsch’s and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association‘s hopes don’t hold up under the empirical evidence that existing trade deals have hurt U.S. ag prices:
…[R]ecent free trade deals — NAFTA (Canada and Mexico), KORUS (South Korea), and CAFTA (Central America) — are flooding the U.S in beef.
In fact, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows U.S. beef imports for January through July 2015 are nearly 33 percent higher than they were in the same period in 2014, 2.16 billion pounds now vs. 1.6 billion pounds then.
Moreover, U.S. beef imports from our new TPP partners over the same period show Australia beef up 55 percent, New Zealand up 15 percent, Canada up 2 percent, Mexico up 39 percent, Japan up 108 percent, Argentina up 46 percent and Chile up 145,579 percent.
Those revealing numbers, however, didn’t stop the NCBA’s Sunshine Boys from proclaiming that “With the completion of this (TPP) work, NCBA looks forward to increased demand and growth for beef exports across the Pacific Rim” because “(b)eef exports currently add over $350 to each head of cattle sold in the U.S.”
Even if accurate, that highly debatable number still won’t cover today’s nearly $500-per-head losses in slaughter cattle, most of which is tied to soaring beef imports, too-high retail beef prices and a strong dollar [Alan Guebert, “Free Trade’s Cheap Talk,” Lincoln Journal Star, 2015.10.10].
Senator Thune, have you decided on TPP yet? Are you going to take the Lentsch/Butz corporate line and back TPP? Or might you rediscover family farms and favor local ag over global corporate machinations?
Many people don’t realize that the National Cattleman’s Beef Association is mostly controlled by the big packers and the big feedlots. Actual cattlemen tend to represented by the various state Stockgrowers Associations and R-CALF. Of course the NCBA is in favor of TPP, more product at cheaper prices for them to process. I haven’t quite figured why Lucas Lentsch thinks it is such a great idea.
It must be STEALTH technology cattle flooding the US because prices of beef at the supermarket sure haven’t gone down with a 33% increase in cattle imports.
Economist/Clinton Sec. Labor Robert Reich wrote about the building blocks of capitalism, with a focus on contracts, bankruptcy and property law. Why?
Many right-wing populists hate the Transpacific Trade Agreement, they despise corporate welfare, they’re against handouts to corporations, they talk incessantly about “crony capitalism.”
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[E]very one of these building blocks has been altered over the last 30 years by very powerful money interests who have succeeded in changing these building blocks so that they improve the finances and enhance the profits of big companies – Wall Street and the very wealthy – but make most other people worse off.
If you look at bankruptcy, for example, someone like Donald Trump can declare bankruptcy four times and insulate himself from the downside risks of his investments. But some average working person who gets caught in a downdraft of the Great Recession and finds that her home is worth a fraction of what it was before can’t use bankruptcy to reorganize mortgage debt.
You can’t use bankruptcy to reorganize your student debts. You could be 70 years old and still have student debts, and those creditors could garnish your social security check in order to pay.
Bankruptcy law has been changed and modified over the years to the benefit of big creditors, banks, credit card companies and corporations the the detriment of of average working people.
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Listen to what the rhetoric of what the right-wing populists is, and some of it sounds remarkably like the rhetoric of the left-wing populists. The difference, of course, is that the right-wing populism comes with the scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims and the poor. It comes with, sometimes, a lot of homophobia and xenophobia, and it has no real respect for democracy.
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What has been left out of the debate is the actual structure of the market itself.
We don’t recognize the relationship between political power and market structure. This has stacked the deck in favor of the people at the top and against average working people. The only response is that you’ve got to have countervailing power such as we had in the first three decades after the Second World War. [e.g. before Reagan]
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Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/robert-reich-on-why-capitalism-needs-saving-20151007#ixzz3oMwhjzXK
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Good point, Paul: packers and feedlot operators should be all about TPP. As for Lentsch, well, he’s just carrying on the state’s commitment to industrial-scale agriculture, right? Does the state Dept. of Agriculture have any time for real small-scale, independent farming?
“Or might you [Thune] rediscover family farms and favor local ag over global corporate machinations?”
That question is a rhetorical exercise, right Cory? We only need to look at what the Kochs want to know what Thune wants.
Leslie, thanks for the detailed information in your comment.
Situps, laps around Aberdeen… rhetorical exercise is just one part of how I keep my youthful figure. :-)