Posted on 05/18/2019 4:38:33 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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Atchison County, my small farming community in northwest Missouri, is home to about 5,000 people. One hundred thousand acres of soybeans are planted here each year. The drop in soybean prices has meant a loss of around $100 in potential income on each of those acres. Atchison County farmers will be looking at a decline of $10 million in gross income this year, or about $2,000 per capita. We won’t be buying many Whirlpool washers.
Supporters of the tariffs begin each conversation with a litany of Chinese wrongs. They say China ignores the rules governing international trade and is at best a geopolitical rival and maybe something far worse. It’s true that the U.S. response to China’s bad behavior has been inadequate. Yet rarely does the conversation move to Canada, Mexico or South Korea, other formerly reliable customers for U.S. agricultural products that have also become targets in Mr. Trump’s world-wide trade war.
Mr. Cordes, a lifelong Republican, is worried about China as well. But he’s also worried about having to take out a mortgage on his farm so he can plant this year’s crop and feed his family. The economic reality has dimmed his ardor for trade wars.
I’d like to stop China’s abuses too, but I’m more concerned with my farm’s financial future. My family produces 150,000 bushels of soybeans a year, but with the price bottoming out, we expect to take a $250,000 hit to our gross income in 2019. Farmers are patriotic. We love our country and don’t want to see it cheated. But we’ve given about as much to this battle as we are able.
Tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers. We already tax ourselves to belong to international organizations that are supposed to enforce trading rules
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Where I live some farmers switched much of their acreage from corn to soybeans because the government has promised to subsidize their soybean crops to offset the loss from tariffs.
Wars have casualties. Trade wars are no different.
Guess what....These farmers play the market on the side.
Nonsense.
Crops are the very definition of a completely, completely fungible product.
The very definition itself.
If a population buys something from somewhere else, that OTHER market is sold. Meaning it needs to be replaced from somewhere else.
Completely fungible.
100%.
Tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers.
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There is the lie. Tariffs are a barrier to the products affected. Consumers will buy elsewhere.
There is nothing about the finances of an American soybean farmer, that selling some calls on soybean deliveries could not solve.
Where were these complaining, heavily subsidized. farmers when the US government eliminated quotas and tariffs on manufactured goods resulting in a flood of subsidized foreign products and the demise of small to medium sized companies?
Likely too busy lobbying Congress and the Department of Agriculture for more subsidies.
I have found that puzzling, too. If Brazil is selling China the soybeans that China used to buy from us, then we should just find whoever was buying soybeans from Brazil last year and sell to them, simple.
But that obviously is not happening. The price of soybeans in the US has crashed completely. Nobody wants these things. They are not food, we can’t ship them to Ethiopia and pat ourselves on the back like we did in the 1950s.
Brazil has massively increased their plantings because of the Chinese trade, too, so there are more soybeans around, period. It is an actual situation.
Consumers will buy elsewhere, at a higher price.
So much for lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
It’s not ask what you can do for your country; it’s tell the country what it better do for you.
Well said. Subsidies we and our children are paying to feed another country. Ansurd. Soybeans are a poison to the endocrine system imho.. keep selling them to our man boobed enemies without taxpayer dollars.
Simple solution: they haven’t planted soybeans yet, so plant fewer and drive the price up. Less expenditure for the same money or more.
“”” Atchison County, my small farming community in northwest Missouri, is home to about 5,000 people. One hundred thousand acres of soybeans are planted here each year. “””
all their eggs in one basket?
Has the ground dried out enough to even plant? This county has had roads and train tracks washed out. It has not been but a few weeks the concerns were the ability to move soybeans already in storage. Wet soybeans in storage swell up and split the storage bins. More to this than itching over tariffs. This county has already been declared a disaster.
All these kinds of stories are nonsense. Soybean prices had spiked for a few years and right now they’re more normal.
The squawking is being done by a few big traders with sweetheart deals with China. Other markets are out there.
Ongoing flooding of some prime crop land is likely to keep prices stable or rising.
Of interest are contracts.
How are monetized contracts for American soybeans affected by subsequent Chinese tariffs?
Two things here” A) since when does the Wall Street Journal care about Flyoveria? B) Trump said this and is working to straighten it out. What else do you have?
This is the middle of May. Seed has been in the ground for weeks now.
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