Posted on 05/04/2003 5:17:55 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Edited on 07/19/2004 2:11:16 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Crawford, Texas, May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Australia and the U.S. may by year's end reach agreement on a free trade accord and submit it to the U.S. Congress for approval, U.S. President George W. Bush said.
Bush, after his first meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard since the start of the Iraq war, said he is ``firmly committed to'' to the treaty. The two leaders also discussed Middle East peace, operations in Iraq and North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, they said at a joint news conference.
(Excerpt) Read more at quote.bloomberg.com ...
You are right that domestic producers should be capable of beating importers, but they can't while they are being beaten over the head by the Federal Government. You are foretting estate taxes, the regulatory overhead of dealing with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the EPA, OSHA... FedGov directly controls how many animals they can have on that land. The rancher has to expend that entire overhead aginst fewer animals. The net result is literal UNDERgrazing, lands virtually destroyed by lack of grazing. BTW, the meat packers don't care about freshness or quality (at least not much) because there are now only eight of them, groups of which form regional oligopolies. While cattle and sheep prices are at all time lows, prices at the store don't fall.
Now, for twenty points, guess who the big investors are in overseas meat production?
The largest integrated food companies in the country have gross pretax margins in beef and pork of 1-2%. That is not a sign of lack of effective competition. It compares with 5-6% margins on average food items and much, much higher ones in branded consumer items (anybody been in the cereal aisle in ten years?). It is a commodity business. Suggesting it is monopolized or anything close to it is ridiculous.
As for government hassles, one entry accounting and distraction. Aussies have government hassles too. And where regulation is a pain in the neck, the solution is to change the regulation, not add more in the form of trade barriers.
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