Farm bankruptcies jump, thanks to Trump

I say, that title rhymes, did you notice? But this is in fact nothing to be lighthearted and clever about.

A tit-for-tat tariff dispute between the Trump administration and China has piled on pressure in an already strained Farm Belt, leaving an increasing number of growers unable to stay afloat. 

Farmers filed 580 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings between January and September, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm advocacy group in the country. That was a 24% increase from the previous year and the highest level since 2011, when there were 676 filings. 

China placed steep tariffs on US farm products last year to retaliate against punitive moves by the Trump administration, adding to challenges for farmers already faced with harsh weather conditions and low commodity prices. Those have sent exports sharply lower and made it difficult for growers to plan the next harvest. - Business Insider

Reality about Trump's farm bailout and the trade war in general

This is from an item that's a good summary of a lot of things.

But TrumpLove turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government payments going to the biggest farm owners. The Department of Agriculture initially announced a $125,000 limit on the amount any one farm could get, but every Trump deal seems to have a gimmick in it to give a special break to the slickest operators. The slickum in this deal is that assorted members of a family can claim to be owners of the same farm and be eligible for bailout money, even if they do no actual farming and live in New York City! Thus, one Missouri farm family got $2.8 million worth of subsidy love from Trump, and more than 80 families topped half a million in payments.

Meanwhile, the great majority of farmers — 80% of eligible grain farmers — got zilch from Donald the Dealmaker. The smaller producers who are most endangered by his export collapse got less than $5,000. So Trump’s “Market Facilitation” is squeezing the many who are most in need while helping a few of the largest get even bigger. - AlterNet

David Dayen has a take on the bigger picture regarding the “trade war.”

This extend-and-pretend scenario, where both sides act as if in a war but undertake no fundamental changes in the relationship, doesn’t give hope to workers on either side of the Pacific Ocean. As Robert Kuttner pointed out this week, years of neglect of China’s economic aggression gave the country putative bargaining leverage over the U.S. But the answer to that was not a tit-for-tat with tariffs, which were never going to break a mercantilist country with plenty of tools to minimize the pain. Only by disentangling supply chains that should never have been bound together in the first place would America—and even China—find a better path.

In the interim, that has begun to happen, although not through onshoring but through a race to the bottom to other low-wage Asian countries. In many ways, that exodus explains the yuan devaluation...

The bigger problem lurks around the corner: The United States has lost its productive capacity and internal know-how. We don’t know how to make many things anymore. This has reached epidemic proportions in the defense sector, where previously perfunctory operations like casting a submarine are now beyond U.S. capabilities. Boeing, our main aircraft maker, apparently has lost the ability to build safe planes. When you relentlessly outsource to cut costs for decades, you don’t just lose jobs, but the intelligence and know-how and muscle memory to manufacture. And in a number of industries that’s what has occurred. - The American Prospect 

Trump never had a coherent tariff/farm plan

When Trump was just a failed "businessman," what he did didn't matter so much.

That giant cliff in Thursday’s stock market report comes down to one thing—one big thing. Donald Trump has admitted that his negotiations with China have gone nowhere, his promised deal in which China was going to buy more U.S. farm products never existed, and in a month he plans to increase the tariffs on China to cover another $300 billion worth of goods...

Meanwhile, former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn admits that the tariffs are doing more harm to the U.S. than to China. Speaking to The Independent, Cohn stated that he didn’t really think the tariffs are impacting the Chinese economy. But they are having a “dramatic impact” on American manufacturing. - Daily Kos

There has been news and discussion, though little of it in corporate "news" media, about Trump's pathological narcissistic and delusional disorders. But what gets far less attention anywhere is that the guy is just so god-damned pathetically just fucking unbelievably stupid.

The latest U.S.-China trade talks broke down after half a day.

Weirdness in Round 2 of Trump farm bailout

Happened yesterday:

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. - Reuters

The "weirdness" is political. Why would they send more to the safely red states of the South, than to the much more iffy (to say the least, for Republicans in 2020) Midwest?

Here's more information. Things are being figured differently this time around, and apparently that's what's leading to the notable geographic differences.

In other words, political calculation is not overtly the #1 factor here. What's best for corporate ag profits is. That's my inexpert take, based on what I've seen so far, anyway.

Right-wing war on farmers elevates

Some views from the ground on Trump’s trade war. Most farmers' options are of course limited.

The soybean markets have been the source of much heartburn this spring, particularly in (mid-May), when prices rode a rollercoaster of Twitter announcements of additional tariffs and another round of trade mitigation payments to farmers.

Farmer reactions varied widely, from anger and disgust to stoic support and even Zen-like detachment.

"The markets just feel like a punch in the gut right now," said Honebrink. "Every time I get my new budget and plan figured out, markets drop and I have to go back to the drawing board."

Rendel added: "I can't tell you how worried and on edge I am every day watching the markets, wondering what is the next thing I'm going to see on Twitter. I'm walking on pins and needles every day."

In central Ohio, Keith Peters believes not all our trade partners will return when the dust settles. "We have to go forward with the realization that we have lost market share for the foreseeable future," he said. - Progressive Farmer

While it looks unlikely that the “new NAFTA” is going to get through Congress, this has useful facts to bear in mind in any case.

"The ITC computer model forecasting does not include the likely impacts of non-tariff measures in New NAFTA," said Dr. Steve Suppan, IATP senior policy analyst. "New provisions streamline approval of foreign food safety, plant and animal health and animal welfare measures as 'equivalent' despite well-documented evidence they are not. New rules in New NAFTA will lock in a process to further lower U.S. food and agricultural chemical safety standards for decades. Based on the historical record, there is real reason for concern over foodborne illness from imported food and New NAFTA's provisions to enable trade of legally unauthorized products of agricultural biotechnology."

The original NAFTA hurt farmers and hollowed out rural communities in the United States, Mexico and Canada, and despite claims from President Trump and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue that New NAFTA is needed to fix the farm economy, the ITC report shows this rhetoric does not match reality. In fact, the New NAFTA will entrench underlying structural issues, exacerbating our ongoing farm crisis, plagued by low prices, rising debt and increased bankruptcies. It locks in a system where global agribusiness firms exploit farmers and extract from rural communities in all three nations. - IATP

An addendum:

The second issue is that this year’s plan is expected to mirror that of last year, when Trump handed out $12 billion to address the problem he created. And under last year’s plan, most of that money went to huge corporate farms, including corporate farms owned by foreign companies, and not to small farmers. In fact, as The Des Moines Register reported, hundreds of Iowa farmers ended up with a payment of less than $25. Not $25 million. Or $25,000. $25. Some payments were less than $5. The average payment was $7,236, which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of operating the most modest farm. And even that number was inflated by the large checks written out for the largest corporate farms. 

Trump is handing out $16 billion. It’s a genuinely large amount of money. But it’s too late, it’s going to the wrong people, and it’s still just a tiny fraction of what’s needed to repair the damage that Trump has caused. - Daily Kos

Trump policies are devastating for farmers, but will that change how they vote?

Despite the news about calling people back in to process loans - a wholly inadequate “fix” if there ever was one - it’s ugly, and it’s going to stay that way.

Donald Trump has literally ruined thousands of farms that have suffered tremendously with the large drop in commodity prices and falling income. Trump’s reckless trade war with our allies has cost billions so far. Through it all, however, the farmers have largely stuck with him. - Daily Kos

From a political perspective, the question is, how many farmers, and other people in farm country, will consistently change their voting habits? As in, away from continued support for corrupt, idiotic right-wingers, and toward intelligent progressives who aren’t just in it for themselves?

I expressed a fond, but admittedly faintly forlorn, hope that it would happen here in the south part of MN-08, in time for the election. Which it didn’t.

Plenty of farmers, especially old ones, bless their hearts, are not going to change their politics no matter what. Part of it is just lifelong habit that is sealed tight. And part of it is…well, I’m far from the only one who can attest personally that it ain’t fun to look in the mirror and face the fact that you got suckered and used, in whatever context. People in general will engage (without realizing it) their motivated reasoning to avoid that at all costs.

It won’t take many farm country voters to flip, to start consistently flipping elections as well. But I have yet to see any serious indication that it’s happening, even in the face of the vicious, demented reality of Traitor Trump and his minions. Hopefully, before too many more years, or better yet months, it will begin.