" * U.S. farmers lost their fourth largest export market after China officially cancelled all purchases of U.S. agricultural products, a retaliatory move following President Donald Trump’s pledge to slap 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese imports.
China’s exit piles on to a devastating year for farmers, who’ve struggled through record flooding and droughts that destroyed crop yields, and trade war escalations that have lowered prices and profits this year."
And there is also this…
“It’s really, really getting bad out here,” said Bob Kuylen, who’s farmed for 35 years in North Dakota."
“Trump is ruining our markets. No one is buying our product no more, and we have no markets no more.”
You can hear the desperation in some of these statements and I feel sorry for those people. They didn’t do anything to deserve this. They were sold a bill of goods that Donald Trump was a great negotiator and it turns out he can’t negotiate anything. Maybe the worst negotiator the US ever had.
$16 billion in aid helps. Funny how only 14% think their farm will be better off. Or that 76% feel that they, the farmers, will bear the brunt of the trade war.
I’m unsure of the logic of over half of farmers who support a trade policy which they feel is unlikely to make them better off and which will lead to greater financial burden. I guess we’ll see what happens to that support as time moves on.
The survey, led by ISU Professor Wendong Zhang, found that 57 percent of those farmers somewhat or strongly supported the U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods that brought retaliatory tariffs from the Chinese government. Another 14 percent had neutral feelings about them. Only 30 percent somewhat or strongly opposed the tariffs.
It’s not a new issue. We’ve ignored it for this long. Might as well ignore it for good. Nobody cares about American farmers. The Federal Government will take care of them. This is what we pay tax dollars for.
@Snow96 why was this thread about struggling farmers merged with a 6 month old thread about the Green New Deal? An OP without any links or facts, just feelings.
Possibly merged into the wrong one. There were two on the famers, I must have found the wrong one. When merging, I only get to see the title, not when it was made.
Annual agricultural exports to China were $19.6B in 2017. Where are you getting 2.2 million farms affected by China walking away from trade agreements?
