Funny that the SDGOP mouthpiece blog hasn’t yet run this e-mail from Senator Marion Michael Rounds weakly clapping for more welfare checks for farmers from trade-wrecking Trump:
I screen-capped this e-mail exactly as delivered; it looks like Team Rounds is so worn out making excuses for Trump’s destructive policies that they can’t even finish their last sentence… the one that could at least tell farmers how to get their new Trumpfare checks, if Trump and Secretary Perdue had a plan yet for the aid they should have known would be necessary when they threw these tariffs at China.
One line that stands out in Rounds’s limp affirmation of the continuing Sovietization of American agriculture is his quotation of the USDA’s Newspeak on the Trump trade war, claiming that this new round of farm bailouts “is in line with the estimated impacts of unjustified retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods and other trade disruptions.”
Hmm… Nation A unilaterally slaps tariffs on Nation B and disrupts global trade. Nation B responds by slapping tariffs on Nation A. Is Nation B’s retaliation really “unjustified”?
Whether we’re talking trade war or hot war, once one country starts it, it seems a little hard to call any strike, counter-strike, or counter-counter-strike “unjustified.” When you declare war, you have to expect the other side is going to shoot back.
So let’s not play word games, Senator Rounds. Donald Trump started a trade war. We can argue about the justification of this trade war. But to suggest that Trump can simply throw reckless tariffs and other spokes into the wheels of global commerce and expect other nations to sit back and do nothing to pressure him back is silly. Farmers are suffering because Trump started a war and decided to use his rural base as pawns in a chess game he’s too impulsive and unstrategic to win.
Related Reading: Showing more sense and guts than South Dakota’s junior Senator, Iowa’s senior Senator Chuck Grassley says Trumpfare may hurt farmers more than help by ignoring past practice and announcing a huge change during planting season:
Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, told reporters Wednesday that the White House should have been more cautious about the timing of the announcement because farmers are still planting.
“[W]e want farmers to make decisions on how many acres of corn and soybeans to plant based on the market and not something the government’s doing,” he said.
“The timing couldn’t have been worse,” said Jonathan Coppess, an agricultural policy professor at the University of Illinois, and a former head of the USDA Farm Service Agency during the Obama administration.
Rainfall in the Midwest has delayed planting, so many farmers can still switch up their crops. Even the prospect of another round of trade assistance could encourage them to plant more soybeans, Coppess said.
“There is certainly enough experience at USDA to know that announcing payments during planting might well cause more problems,” Coppess said [Catherine Boudreau, “Why Trump’s New $16B Farmer Bailout Could Hurt Agriculture,” Politico, 2019.05.23].
Maybe farmers don’t mind being at “the tip of the spear,” but I bet they wish the spear weren’t being waved around recklessly by someone who doens’t pay attention to the lessons of past battles.
tip of the spear. that’s good cory, if a bit war like. how about the toe of the track spike.
Navy SEAL farmers, JI Joes, suit up, get your militia camo tactical ball cap, invite our gov into the tractor cab, grab your ar15 for “protection and self defense”, and plow up some pheasant habitat and plant invasive wind breaks! BTW, I believe the ash borer SDPB1or2 touts is FAKE NEWS. there aint no climate change!!!! josh, :)
It is still VERY wet in fields around here – crops are not going into the ground. [Anti-welfare queen conservative — editorial snark] Farmers are looking at the drop-dead date for planing and deciding to take the money for not getting a crop in the field.
So my question still is if a farmer does not get a crop in the ground, how is he or she affected by the U.S/Chinese tariffs and trade war? Will those who collect on the preventive planing insurance get a piece of this new federal payment as well?
Biden effectively screwed another tip of the spear: college students in debt after the pro credit card bankruptcy legislation a decade ago. Liz Warren effectively knocks out Biden. He is too old, wrong race, and gender, in my view of desirability of national diversity. BTW,…
One brutal sentence sums up the dismal state of wealth disparity in the US. “The bottom half of Americans combined have a negative net worth,” Ben Steverman wrote in a recent Bloomberg article.
My heart goes out to the farmers and ranchers who have lost it all in the previous decades.
IMPEACH THE MTHRFCKR (in the fine tradition of the federal judge who recently told so and so: STFU :)
Which of our two make believe Senators can tell me which econ book explains this kind of twisted logic? The Ag Sec is still spewing the crapola that “Chinese tariffs are paying” for this SNAFU. I grew up on a farm. I had respect for farmers, but backing trump has me reevaluating. Very sad!
https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1131607081386217472
Far as I can tell, Cory is the only one reporting on the fiasco called trade war. Here is where we are now at, J.C. Penney stocks are now under a buck a share, shoe stores are sounding alarm bells, and the media thinks this is a popular idea.
” There are no calm waters in sight in the U.S.-China trade fight, but even before the latest round of tariffs, the retail industry had been tumbling in a whirlpool.
The backdrop: For the past few quarters, retailers have warned analysts about the U.S.-China trade war’s potential to hurt sales as tariffs push prices up and turn shoppers away. But those effects have been invisible so far because the first two rounds of tariffed products largely excluded consumer goods.” https://www.axios.com/us-china-trade-war-retail-effects-consumer-goods-479561d7-287d-4e1b-aac8-77e20753b4a9.html
Retail stores are closing, so even Amazon may not be able to get product to sell.
BTW, to show you how republican think really stinks, the disaster bill got canned today, by a republican from Texas. These guys don’t give a damn about America, they only care about Russia. Figure it out farmers, the republican party is just not into you… until November. Then they will come hat in hand to tell you about those mean liburals that made them communists.
Regarding taxpayer bailouts for farmers, I wonder if anyone even thinks that we taxpayers are gonna have to pay all of this “free money” back to the treasury. We are deeply in debt and no one seems to care about it. Used to be republicans would smirk and jerk their collective heads in dismay at the rising tide of red ink, now they just go about business like always and say to print more money. China, on the other hand, is rolling along quite nicely. They are 5 times the population and are about 5 times our GDP. Which means that the phony “trump/republican trade war” is not working for team US. The world economy is now being led by China to the tune of about 60%. So while you may think that Nikita trump is punching those Chinese in the face, they are playing bob and weave like Ali did with Joe Frazier.
Farmers worked hard for the market share they had before Nikita trump and now, it is like flatulence in the wind, gone.
Average taxpayer bailout to farmers is about $7,200.00 each…Unless your Brazilian and then you get the big bucks. “But that’s not to say some people didn’t get more. As The Chicago Tribune reported U.S. taxpayers shelled out over $5 million to a Brazilian-owned meatpacking firm. That kind of payment, to large ag-related factories and enormous corporate farms, is where by far the majority of the money actually went. When a billion dollars is carved up into payments of several million dollars each, it really doesn’t end up in all that many hands.” Des Moines Register
Now South Dakota farmers, don’t you wish you spoke Portuguese?
Russia is covering even more Chinese market that Economic Eunuch ruined for US farmers. From Bloombery via Axios:
“Chickens
“China is cranking up meat imports amid an outbreak of disease among the country’s pigs, and one big winner is Russia, which has long been angling to set up a reliable chicken business. A decade ago, Russia was a net importer of chickens, but now they’re nearly at break even. Last year, China agreed to allow imports, and 30 Russian companies are approved to send birds to the southeast. China’s poultry imports will jump 68 percent this year at 575,000 tons, according to USDA forecasts, thanks to the national need for protein despite the ongoing a-pork-alypse.”
Anatoly Medetsky, Bloomberg
jerry
The Trump administration paid the corrupt Brazillian brothers, Wesley an Joesley, $62 million in the first round of farmer bailout money.
Translation, some American farmers didn’t get badly needed cash to keep them in business.
Brazilian organized crime members Wesley and Joesley Batista, own the slaughterhouse in Greely, CO but their $62 million bailout didn’t end up in Colorado. It’s in a trust in South Dakota. I could give you the details but SD’s most corrupt in the nation banking laws don’t allow transparency or oversight by the state.
“China is cranking up meat imports amid an outbreak of disease among their country’s pigs …” If that disease mysteriously shows up in USA what are the chances Smithfield brought it here as part of the Tariff War? All’s fair in love and war, ‘ya know. Trump would do the same thing if he were clever enough to think of it.
Economic Eunuch is the star of this collection of editorial cartoons. One shows how he is treating US farmers. Hint: It’s not nice. Bolton the chicken hawk makes an appearance too.
https://short1.link/cYShgS
Wanna know why republican farmers shut their pie hole regarding the screwing their getting from Nikita trump? The banks, have a lot to say about who is gonna stay in business. If you ain’t a card carrying, full throated Nikita trumper, they ain’t gonna lend you operating money. Worth a read. Let retired farmer Jim Pat Wilson explain
“The Republican administration has once again increased tariffs on China. Meanwhile, farmers across the commonwealth continue to struggle from trade deficits inspired by the first round of disputes. Caught in the Republican party’s political crosshairs, farmers are stuck in an environment that has cultivated fear for anyone who dares to speak against the mighty GOP.
My name is Jim Pat Wilson, and I have a lot less to lose than some of my farming friends and I want to speak up for those who fear they will be retaliated against.”
https://eu.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2019/05/24/donald-trump-trade-wars-hurt-kentucky-farmers-who-fear-retaliation-republican-party/1222909001/
Every time I see the headline for this post, I think, Does Rounds clap any other way?
Of course farming isn’t the only industry Economic Eunuch is trashing. He’s crushing the beer business too. Per National Memo:
“During the two years before Trump took over, jobs in the beer industry grew by 27 percent. Then Trump slapped a 10 percent tariff on aluminum and the number of beer-related jobs dropped from 2.23 million in 2016 to 2.19 million in 2018.”
https://short1.link/B5C9je