Posted on 03/04/2019 8:13:02 AM PST by SleeperCatcher
Full headline: Winning: Trump, Xi close to ‘trade deal’ as Chinese farmers warn government they’ll need subsidies to compete with U.S. farm products
As official Washington preoccupies itself with the latest alleged “crisis” involving some aspect of the Trump administration, the White House has been quietly but steadily making progress on its key trade objectives.
Last year POTUS Donald Trump announced that his negotiators had reached a deal with Mexico and Canada to rework NAFTA into a new United States Mexico Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA). The agreement awaits action in the U.S. Congress and the legislatures of the other two countries, though it’s passage now that Democrats control the House is in doubt.
Still, the president’s team continues to make progress in other aspects of trade, especially with China. Like his bid to rework NAFTA was panned by #NeverTrump critics, so, too, has his tariff approach to dealing with the huge trade imbalances between the U.S. and China. But when we separate the hyperbole from the results, it appears as though the president’s approach is working.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenationalsentinel.com ...
They must not be very good farmers....................
So we are going to export agricultural products and import durable goods. Can anyone say we have a third world economy? Economically we are regressing back to the the 18th century.
Interesting to see how pure market forces could straighten out a lot of corrupt practices.
Those large, labor intensive collective farms must not have worked out too well.
Just my impression, but they tend to grow enough...to supply local and regional markets. With the exception of some unusual fruits...there’s not a lot of Chinese agricultural products sent outside of the country. They will tell you that they have 300 million farmers, but the bulk of them are field labor folks...marginally paid. So the concept here (in the US)...one farmer with implements/automation handling 200 acres of a farm....hasn’t really made its way into China (somewhat the same story in South Africa).
They are small scale farms. As such, American farmers have the advantage of distributing their costs over a large number of acres / products.
Do they have like one .2 billion people of which 800 million are poor and starving why the hell would they export any food at all?
This is exactly where this globalist nonsense has gone
Complete stupidity
Soy isn’t fit for human consumption, so let the Chinese have it.
One doesn’t “regress bacK’ they “regress.”
I don’t know how many poor the Chinese have but it isn’t 800 million, and there isn’t any mass starvation going on.
I could easily farm 1000 acres by myself with the newer equipment.The biggest crunch would be harvest time-dealing with hauling all that grain.
Where are the tariffs you promised President Trump?
Expect the Chinese practice mercantilism so forget it.
Two brothers I knew inherited 2,000 acres. Their farm finances advisor told them two guys with 2,000 acres cropland was a part-time job. They expanded into hog production.
When I was a ute I worked on a dairy farm in PA. 650 cows and 1500 acres. Aside from milking the crops took four of us to work them properly. With the advances in equipment I could see one man managing - except for planting and harvest. I was so sick of picking corn by the end of the season it wasn’t funny. Some very long days and many in a row.
At the rate of U.S. federal farm subsidies, they might be right.
The farm subsidies, like the welfare in the cities, have just kept the farmers poor.
China is the world's top producer of wheat, soybeans, rice, vegetables, and fish, number two in corn, etc. They have been feeding a LOT of people for a long time. North China is one of the world's great breadbaskets. However, they still have several hundred million people in the countryside. They can't all go to Shanghai and make widgets for export to the U.S. China is now majority urban, but they still need to build out more of a domestic retail and service sector to absorb their surplus labor supply. This is linked to the land ownership issue. The collectives own the land. Farm families have an allotment from the collective, but not ownership. This makes consolidation and mechanization very difficult. This wasn't easy when the U.S. went through this process over a period of about 50 years starting in the 1930's; indeed, it's still going on. And we had the advantages of being an early adapter of farm technology and of getting started when the factories could still provide mass employment for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. It's harder now.
Western Europe is still tangled up in the same issue as well. Their farms are tiny by U.S. standards. The EU really has a state supported landscape gardening program that produces a lot of food on small farms, with farmers being subsidized for also providing social benefits linked to environmental and aesthetic metrics. This is why Europe is so protectionist on agriculture; French, German and British farmers couldn't compete with Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois in a free trade environment.
Don’t hold your breath. If a deal is reached. It will fall short of actually holding the commies accountable. Just as the New NAFTA doesn’t have any language holding Mexico accountable on their illegals and such.
Winning!
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