French Farmers Block German, Spanish Trucks

UPDATED: French farmers said on Monday they had blocked and turned back as many as 300 trucks importing food from Germany, the latest protest against a fall in food prices.

Farmers set up checkpoints on six roads between Germany and France late on Sunday night and said they would continue their action until later Monday.

"We've already held back between 200 and 300 lorries transporting products that are distorting competition for us," said Franck Sander, local head of the FNSEA farming union.

"For example, we made a lorry carrying Babybel (cheese) turn back. Consumers think this is French but the cheese comes from Slovakia," he said.

Sander said there were around 1,000 farmers taking part in the protest and had also turned back several lorries laden with fruit and vegetables on their way from Germany.

Farmers' representatives will be holding talks with officials at 2:00 pm (1200 GMT), after which they will decide whether to extend their blockade.

Other farmers have carried out similar actions stopping produce getting into France from Spain.

Around 100 farmers ransacked dozens of trucks from Spain on a highway in the southwestern Haute-Garonne region, threatening to unload any meat or fruit bound for the French market.

They used some 10 tractors to block the motorway not far from the Spanish border, causing traffic jams that stretched up to four kilometres (2.5 miles), Guillaume Darrouy, secretary general of the Young Farmers of Haute-Garonne, told AFP.

The action comes after a week that has seen farmers block cities, roads and tourist sites across France in protest at falling food prices, which they blame on foreign competition, as well as supermarkets and distributors.

Farmers have dumped manure in cities, blocked access roads and motorways and hindered tourists from reaching Mont St-Michel in northern France, one of the country's most visited sites.

Fearful of France's powerful agricultural lobby, the government on Wednesday unveiled an emergency package worth €600 million in tax relief and loan guarantees, but the aid has done little to stop the unrest.

"The measures announced by the government ... none of them deal with the distortion of competition" with farmers from other countries, said Sander, saying French farmers face higher labour costs and quality standards.

A combination of factors, including changing dietary habits, slowing Chinese demand and a Russian embargo on Western products over Ukraine, has pushed down prices for staples like beef, pork and milk.

Paris has estimated that around 10 percent of farms in France – approximately 22,000 operations -- are on the brink of bankruptcy with a combined debt of 1.0 billion euros.

Speaking early Monday morning, President Francois Hollande threw his weight behind the farmers, saying: "they should know that, protests or no protests, we are by their side."

Where is the capital of France, is it in Paris or is it in Brussels?

To decide this matter, the French farmers want the capital to be in Paris where they have immense political power. But for other issues, such as attracting European Union citizens to come to spend a summer as a tourist on their farms, they want all the benefits enduring to a citizen of the European Union and they love the rules set forth in Brussels.

We conservatives understand the arguments made by Milton Friedman that trade among nations benefits both the buyers and sellers because the more efficient producer of goods is benefited by the sale and the consumer is benefited by the lower price and higher quality. But the European, especially French farmers, argue that other values should not be disregarded.

I live in Bavaria which, believe it or not, drove out Walmart. The Germans both officially and by consensus concluded that German retailers, even mom-and-pop retailers, offered more civilized working conditions and a good way of life for the moms and pops but Walmart, with its presumed advantages to consumers, undermined a German way of life.

When I first came to Germany I was appalled at the restrictions on shopping times. In those days if the holiday fell on a Friday or Monday and you didn't stock up on your groceries you could be out of luck for three full days. Today, these restrictions have been relieved and shopping approaches the American model a little more. But still, down here in Bavaria the assumption is that the consumer will buy his foodstuffs during regular hours to the same degree as he would buy them if they were available 24/7. The retail salesperson needs his home life too. The Bavarians might be right or they might be wrong but who should decide?

Should the decision be made in the municipal village city hall, or in Munich the capital of Bavaria, or in Berlin, the capital of Germany, or in Brussels or some other city which has some function in the European Union? Should the decision be made by some supranational entity created to arbitrate trade disputes among nations like GAAT?

Does our answer change if we're dealing with a predatory, mercantilist trade partner?

I have been arguing for some time that liberals go forum shopping when they want to win an argument. We might say that the American Civil War was an example of liberals deciding that decisions about issues like tariffs or slavery should be made in Washington rather than in Richmond or Atlanta. Certainly, the antidemocratic aspects of the European Union demonstrate the left's penchant for getting its way by changing the rules of the game. We conservatives instinctively want to do away with political solutions to economic problems, preferring to let the market sort the matter out. So we instinctively argue that the French farmers should look in the mirror and find out why their produce is so expensive. We instinctively say that the farmer should not be able to get a politician to tell the consumer that he may not have a German product, or that he must pay an excise tax to get it.

Yet we are making the same arguments in America today, or, rather, Donald Trump is making these arguments. Donald Trump is saying, there is more at stake here than the consumer getting a cheaper or a better car, we must consider the automobile assembly worker's job lost to Japan. He points to China and says, here is a predatory economy, a mercantilist economy, which is hollowing out American manufacturing and we are not considering the needs of our workers but only of a few megacorporations dealing with China. The matter gets worse when we jigger of our Constitution so that trade deals negotiated by that hard-nosed negotiator, Barack Obama, need only be affirmed by the House and the Senate instead of by two thirds of the Senate. In effect, we seek a political solution to an economic problem, we have done so by forum shopping, and we have even rigged the forum.

These are not easy questions, but it is easy to say that our current economic relationship with the likes of China must be fixed or more than automobile assembly workers or assemblers of televisions and telephones will be ruined.

What is the difference between those who object to Obama selling the country out to the Chinese and French farmers blocking the roads? Are all these issues to be decided in the streets as the French farmers would do? Do we have a responsible government, meaning do we have a responsible Republican Party because we assume Obama is not motivated by any patriotic impulse, to negotiate these matters to an agreeable conclusion?

Recently, my son was hung up near Paris when the roads were blocked by taxidrivers protesting the use of the Internet to circumvent the taxi industry.

In Germany we recently experienced a postal strike, although the effects were minimized by supplemental deliveries and by the fact that everybody uses the Internet anyway. Before that, a railroad strike.

Fortunately, thanks to Ronald Reagan and his showdown with the air controllers we have a different culture in America in which strikes by public employees are on the whole discouraged. On the other hand, public employees unions have been getting their way to such an unrestrained degree that they have no cause to strike until they met Scott Walker.

We will see how the European Union deals with these problems. The problem for the elitists in Brussels is that there is no democratic outlet if the suffering is in France but the remedy is in Brussels and owned by a largely unelected and unresponsive bureaucracy.

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