Fear of 'disastrous situation' in farm economy as China targets huge US soybean business

If Chinese stop eating which isn't likely

 

Obama created a lot of uncertainty when Russia retaliated against western food supliers in response to sanctions. Guess what happened? Exactly, absolutely nothing, the sanctions are still in effect and everyone is doing absolutely fine. All this lib fear mongering is just meh, you better worry about unsustainable trade deficits.

 

China buys a lot of soy beans from us even though they have already cut back on it before this. They must use it for something. Soy sauce maybe? LOL

 

Russia is a tiny market by comparison, and this is not a "lib" issue. It's simple economics. Being an alt-right nutjob doesn't make you immune to economic reality.

 

Well, that's the exact same thinking the helped doom the South in the Civil War.

They assumed that demand for their principal crop, cotten, could not be replaced.

They were wrong. British textile mills began developing cotten in India and Egypt.

The economy in the South never recovered from the loss of half of its prewar market.

 

By that logic nothing should ever be changed because it creates uncertainty.
Were you suggesting a more gradualized approach or something, to give the Agro corporations a year or two time to adjust? (After Congress has decided on a permanent policy course)

 

I am really impressed with the forum members knowledge of agriculture and soy. I guess as a suburban city dweller I know next to nothing about soy and even less about farming. I had to google uses for soy and found most of it is used for animal feed and some is used for human consumption in things like soy milk, soy flour and tofu. The thing I do not understand is the assertion that the Chinese will starve because of these tariffs on soy. From my quick investigation it doesn't look like it makes up a lot of an average person's diet. (It seems like soy could disappear and I would hardly notice it as from our food habits. My wife may miss tofu occasionally but it would not be the end of the world.) Also it is just a tariff not an outright ban. Won't this just mean soy will cost the average Chinese citizen more. I would just choose an alternate food source at a price that is more comfortable. Is it the animal feed that the Chinese are using soy for? Couldn't they just use alternate sources like corn or grains? I would think before Chinese officials decided to come up with these tariffs they must have considered other sources to replace the soy, either other countries that will sell them soy or a substitute.

 

By that logic, all policy, no matter how foolhardy and reckless, is as good as any other.

 

Well, one thing about Trumpsters. They never seem to worry about not knowing what they're talking about!

 

Who's going to suddenly replace America as the number one food exporter in the world? Name the country or countries.

 

So we can agree then that the Chinese garbage in our Walmarts is easily replaced and all this lib hysteria is nonsense, right?

Or you are going to continue this silly liberal "US export is easily replaced but Chinese junk is irreplaceable" nonsense?

 

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about what actually happened. Actually, cotton production returned to near-normal levels immediately proceeding the Civil War and emancipation of slaves, and prices were almost exactly the same too. The thing is that the Civil War gave British foreign competition a foothold and impetus to get into the market. Thereafter, the US gradually began losing marketshare over the next 15-20 years.

 

Tarrifs are on the alternate sources too and on pork which is the number one desired imported food in China. Soy beans get all the attention because they are the biggest import item on the list.

 

Sure, and understood. It isn't as simple as growing your own food and then exporting the excess. We have grown food in foreign countries for US consumption for a long time. And even involved ourselves in protecting these american corporations like united fruit, from a change of gov't in those foreign nations. Compliments of our CIA. I guess having Dulles as its first head might have something to do with the ties between the CIA and big business. How American Interests are one and the same with banking and corporate interests. Yet these corporations owe no allegiance to any nation. At least many of them, if one were to judge this by their actions over time.

 

I see you are already out of ammo in this debate and have nothing left but insults. That didn't take long.

 

There are a lot of double standards in their economic arguments. This wouldn't be the only one.

Another of the one of the double standards I've heard is that "tariffs will be very damaging to the economies of both sides involved" but that "we should have higher taxes". The incoherency is basically that they're saying taxes on economic exchange within a country is good but taxes on economic exchange between different countries is bad.

 

You are stuck in the past. In the world of today countries have their own agribusiness and the role of corporations from America is ever shrinking.

 

Like Mexico? We have corporate farms there. And surely in other parts of the world too? I have read that western interests are very interested in Ukrianian farmland. It seems that they must have some really good land for farming.

Brazil, americans running huge farms in brazil was happening a few years ago. Ever read about Brazil? I could probably do some research and find a whole host of countries with american agribusiness there. Am I really that far in the past? Grins

 

I think you are when you reference the CIA and agribusiness. That was a very limited time frame when the United fruit company was seemingly being helped by the CIA many decades ago and is from a by gone era.

 

The CIA has been involved in the agribusiness for many years. Most notably Columbia.

 

We can certainly agree that Republicans are big-government-loving hypocrites who lie constantly about being for smaller, less intrusive government. You are no different when it comes to promoting welfare and socialism than the "libs" that you despise, except that you have a different target for your welfare and socialism.

 

Indeed we can agree. that's why we elected Trump and not one of those 20 swamp republicans or democrats who also ran. Time to drain the swamp and MAGA.

PS going forward, try to stay on topic though and make your posts at least remotely relevant, not some totally random irrelevant rants.

 

Very little of the "slashing and burning" has been for farmland.

 

And yet you think it would be so easy for us not to be dependent on China and go for it on our own.

 

So, Trump screwed his rural base hard.

Again.

Just like we liberals predicted. No, we never get tired of being proven correct. We're used to it. We only get tired of not being listened to.

A few of the Trump-voters are coming to their senses, and realizing how every promise Trump made to them was a lie. Most of them, however, are remaining defiantly ignorant. Cults are like that. No matter. We only need a minority of them to return to reality in order to win big, and that appears to be happening.