Posted on 07/26/2019 9:14:01 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
The U.S. government will pay American farmers hurt by the trade war with China between $15 and $150 per acre in an aid package totaling $16 billion, officials said on Thursday, with farmers in the South poised to see higher rates than in the Midwest.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Being a NYC slicker, I don’t know if this is a lot or a little and if it is good or bad.
I’m sure I will fin out soon enough :)
I don’t really think it is necessary but I understand why it is done.
The bottom line is that many farmers will come out ahead on this. $16 billion covers almost the full cost of agricultural exports to China - but much of those commodity products can still go to other buyers.
The cost of these payments to US farmers is more than covered by the tariffs collected from Chinese imports.
They need to be seriously thinking about growing something else and new markets.
This country lived off of tariffs in the early years.
You are right of course.
I’m not going to be able to plant soy beans this year. Think maybe they’d throw me down some cash?
Also a message to China about its limited ability to affect the US economy
Hmmph. I do understand the hurt that comes from anyh trade war, especially with China, and especially to our agricultural business. But this does seem a little higher than it should be.
Also, I really don’t have much sympathy for the farmers as long as they get crazy $$ from all sorts of other subsidies. And the bullshit corn in my fuel!
Not much of a limited government policy but it's the lesser of two evils. A Rat president in the same situation would probably spend 4-5 times more $$.
We are at waa trade war and this is how it’s done.
The givernment, going to war, must be a supplicant in order to prevail.
Zactly.
China cannot grow more food stocks to make up the difference of demand. Nor can they rely on South America to full that gap, as their arabke land, technologies and ability to invest in infrastructure to make up the difference
Winning...
Food is one of our “Duck Boats”...
+1
Eat More Food!
What is the impact on dairy farmers?
If they are lactose intolerant....Gas!
We made trade deals that favor the financial sector at cost to industrial labor. Donald Trump comes along and declares that he will fix that with tariffs. Fixing a bad trade deal damages farmers. We fix that by subsidizing farmers at the cost of the next generation of taxpayers.
A funny thing about these consequences, they are often difficult to perceive even after occurring. The level of perception does not always depend on the intensity or degree of the consequence.
For example, we have a national debt of nearly $23 trillion, however, the consequences might be foreseeable to a large minority but the actual debt, much less the consequences of that debt, are understood by very few. The consequences of our deficits, the accumulations of which constitute the debt, are perceived by even fewer. The perception of deficits is one step further removed from the perception of the debt.
Is it pain or the perception of pain which cause consequences to be perceived? In other words, the consequences of a staggering $22 trillion debt are probably more painful than the consequences of a trade policy which hurts our farmers, yet the perception of pain felt by our farmers has great immediate political consequences-the government acts promptly to remediate with $16 billion of subsidies.
The consequences of deficits and debt are often unperceived, for example, inflation generated debt ultimately taxes those of us who save but the pain is suffused and gradual and often unremarked so deficits are unrestrained and accumulate more debt every year.
Sometimes perceptions turn on values other than economic pain or gain. Sometimes questions of equity or, more precisely, racial justice overrule otherwise immutable laws of economics. So government policy required (and still does) the extension of risky credit to unworthy house buyers of color and the great recession is precipitated as that bubble bursts.
The perception of racial injustice caused the government to interfere in the marketplace, resulting in huge economic consequences for the whole economy, indeed for the world economy. The consequences, especially unemployment, included more than a recession which disproportionately damaged the very people of color whom the government sought to help with regulations about access to mortgages.
To relieve society of the unintended consequences of the mortgage credit bubble, virtually all governments of advanced economies around the world embarked on a program of "quantitative easing," to the tune of trillions of dollars to reflate the economy. This cure, and especially the way it was implemented, damaged the industrial wage earning class, (apologies for adopting Marxist lingo) but greatly benefited the asset holding class. Much of the pain which normally would have been felt by the industrial wage earning class who received no real wage increases would otherwise have been more broadly perceived if the consequences of trade policy had not permitted access to cheap industrial goods from China which mitigated and probably postponed the inflationary impact of quantitative easing.
The de-industrialization of the country as a result of trade policies deferred or mitigated its consequences by compensating the industrial working class with cheap Chinese consumer goods. The impact on the saving class, the middle class, was also thus mitigated, or more likely camouflaged and perhaps only postponed.
To relieve the industrial working class of the pain caused by trade policies, we now seek to change those trade policies with tariffs and new trade agreements which are likely to affect consumers, the holders of capital as well as farmers even as it benefits industrial workers with, presumably, more jobs even as it harms these very people by rendering consumer goods more expensive.
Speaking of farmers, a perceived political desire to minimize what in those days we called "global warming" led to regulations subsidizing biofuels. No doubt that perception melded neatly with a gain for a certain class, politicians who represented agricultural states. Even Donald Trump himself, the champion of deregulating, could not commit to ending corn subsidies before the Iowa caucuses. So the subsidies and the regulations march unvexed from Iowa caucus to Iowa caucus.
Actually, the one class that always benefits from the consequences of industrial policy is the political class -and that consequence is always anticipated.
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