The agricultural purchases required in the agreement are both vague and clearly far too small to restore even the conditions that existed before Trump’s actions sent China looking to South America and other regions to replace goods they would have previously purchased from America. In 2019, farm debt topped $416 billion—absolutely swamping the scale of Trump’s “enormous deal,” even when including non-agricultural products.Even as bankruptcy is up 24% in a single year, Trump is telling America’s farmers that it’s time to buy “much larger tractors” to generate all the grain required by this deal. Trump says that he expects China to buy $50 billion of U.S. agricultural products. That $50 billion figure is one that Trump has deployed before. It’s just that the date keeps shifting. And shifting. That number is imaginary, but the exploding farm debt and bankruptcies are very real. - Daily Kos
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Latest big China "deal" does little for farmers
Or for anyone else. In their desperate efforts to produce some - indeed, any - kind of plausible false equivalence in the case of Trump, corporate “news” media has been pimping this as a triumph. Which is a preposterous, and pathetic, take.
Speaking of trade deals, have you read that John Thune and John Cornyn are not pleased with the changes that Pelosi forced Trump to give in on ?
ReplyDeleteThe "smart" politician should vote NO saying that this bill does not go far enough ... that's it is just Trump window-dressing a deal so he can take credit ... then every time another company announces they are building a plant in Mexico, the "smart" politician can just say "I told you so".