Trade War and Oil Industry Waivers Continue to Harm Farmers

Empty grain receiving facility - photo credit: Washington Post.

Ironically, it is Republicans who preach - or at least pretend to preach - the mantra of personal responsibility and that bad decisions and actions should reap consequences on those who make bad life decisions. Thus, for example if suffers the consequences of being gay or poor, somehow one's choices are to blame, not social and economic barriers.  Applying this rule, it is delicious to see Mid-West farmers who helped elect Donald Trump pay an enormous economic and financial price for their bad and - in my view - morally bankrupt decision. I truly worry about the children and youths who are suffering as a result, but as for the adults who chose to vote for a narcissistic demagogue who played to their worse instincts and bigotries, they sadly deserve their fate.  Frighteningly, many continue to refuse to see their own fault in what has now befallen them.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the continued economic devastation  Trump's self-created trade wars and pandering to the oil industry continues to wreak in the Mid-West in particular.  Here are story highlights (Note the idiocy and insanity: "Many of those grumbling about Trump today concede they are unlikely to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate next year."):

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa — On a typical day, about 80 tractor trailers full of corn line up to dump their loads at Siouxland Energy Cooperative, the ethanol plant just outside of town. The air throbs with the noise and vibration of this industrial moonshine operation, which distills nature’s harvest into a cleaner-burning fuel.

But today, the warm Iowa sun shines on an almost empty parking lot, and the machinery sits idle.

After two decades, Siouxland this month halted operations following the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to exempt 31 small oil refiners from a federal law requiring them to blend ethanol in their gasoline. The waivers, which the Trump administration has approved almost four times as often as its predecessor, have undercut demand for ethanol and the corn used to make it, farmers said.

“The waivers are what pushed us over the edge,” said Steve Westra, 46, the plant manager. “It absolutely killed the potential for anybody to make any money at this.”

For Iowa farmers already suffering from an extended trade war with China, the ruling has made ethanol the focus of their growing ire over President Trump’s policies.

The trade war has cost farmers potential Chinese orders for the corn-based fuel as well as for a byproduct that is used as animal feed. Now, the refinery exemptions are compounding the financial pain — and threatening political consequences for [Trump] the president, who won this state and its six electoral votes in 2016.

“I supported Trump in the last election. Today, if the election were held, I don’t think I could vote for him,” said Kelly Nieuwenhuis, 60, a corn and soybean farmer in Primghar, about 40 miles east. “It’s definitely growing, the displeasure with the Trump administration.” . . . .Many of those grumbling about Trump today concede they are unlikely to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate next year.

In recent days, amid a rising impeachment furor, the White House has scrambled to midwife a compromise between ethanol advocates and the oil industry. . . . The discontent in deeply conservative northwest Iowa has its roots in [Trump’s] the president’s confrontation with China, which farmers initially backed.

The trade war’s mounting costs are especially evident in this corner of the corn belt. Iowa’s fourth congressional district, which sprawls from the Nebraska and Minnesota borders to the outskirts of Des Moines, has lost more export sales to China than any other district in the country, according to the U.S.-China Business Council.

China’s retaliation for [Trump's] the president’s tariffs on Chinese goods last year cost farmers 78 percent of their $856 million in oilseed and grain shipments to China, the study found.

Those figures may understate the toll. The trade war erupted as farmers were counting on a major increase in Chinese orders for U.S. ethanol and an ethanol byproduct called distillers dried grain (DDG.) Those potential sales for the past two years have now become casualties of the trans-Pacific conflict, Nieuwenhuis said.

China in 2015 had purchased more than 5 million metric tons of DDG, a high-protein animal feed, valued at $1.4 billion, according to the U.S. Grains Council. By the following year, China was the No. 3 export market for American ethanol, purchasing more than 200 million gallons, worth almost $350 million, the industry group said. Since then, DDG sales have plunged by roughly 98 percent; ethanol orders are virtually nonexistent.

China targeted Midwestern farmers for retaliation, calculating that complaints from a key part of Trump’s political base might cause him to buckle. The president so far has instead tried to make farmers whole with a $28 billion bailout and promises of future riches.

Neither seems to be working. Multiple farmers said the Agriculture Department payments that [Trump] the president bills as full compensation for lost Chinese sales, while better than nothing, still leave them in the red.

[The Trump/Pence] administration has exempted more than 38 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel from ethanol blending requirements compared with just 7.4 billion in President Obama’s final three years, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry group.

It is sad that racial animus and clinging to extremist religious beliefs mean more to a majority of these farmers than their own economic survival.  Adding insult to injury is that the rest of America has been forced to pay 28 billion to save these farmers from the consequences of their own idiocy and bigotry.

Trump's Trade War Deepens Farmers' Financial Plight

In 2016 many American farmers succumbed to Donald Trump's racist messaging and voted for a bombastic con-man who had bankrupted numerous companies, lost millions of dollars for others, and left a trail of unpaid contractors.  Now, Trump's trade war with China is pushing many of these same farmers towards their own bankruptcy filings.  Divine justice?  Perhaps, yet some surveys continue to show strong majorities of farmers putting their support for Trump's racist and xenophobic policies ahead of their own financial well being.  It's a case of the GOP's long ability to use race and other forms of bigotry to induce individuals to vote against their own interests on steroids.   Do I wish these folks well?  Not really and perhaps if the trade war with China continues they will reap the economic catastrophe they deserve.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the deepening financial plight in the heartland.  Here are excerpts:

American farmers have become collateral damage in a trade war that Mr. Trump began to help manufacturers and other companies that he believes have been hurt by China’s “unfair” trade practices.

More than a year into the trade dispute, sales of American soybeans, pork, wheat and other agricultural products to China have dried up as Beijing retaliates against Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. Lucrative contracts that farmers long relied on for a significant source of income have evaporated, with Chinese buyers looking to other nations like Brazil and Canada to get the commodities they need. Farm bankruptcy filings in the year through June were up 13 percent from 2018 and loan delinquency rates are on the rise, according to the American Farm Bureau.

The predicament of farmers is becoming a political problem for Mr. Trump as he heads into an election year. For months, farmers have remained resolute, continuing to pledge support to [Trump] a president who says his trade policies will help the agricultural industry win in the end. While there are few signs of an imminent blue wave in farm country, a growing number of farmers say they are losing patience with [Trump's] the president’s approach and are suggesting it will not take much to lose their vote as well.

Mr. Trump, who regularly brags about an economic boom despite signs of a slowdown, has in some cases made matters worse.

We’re not starting to do great again,” Brian Thalmann, the president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, told Mr. Perdue at the event. “Things are going downhill and downhill quickly.”

On Monday, after a 72-hour period during which Mr. Trump twice escalated his trade war with China, Mr. Thalmann said he could no longer support [Trump] the president as he did in 2016.

Losing the world’s most populous country as an export market has been a major blow to the agriculture industry. Total American agricultural exports to China were $24 billion in 2014 and fell to $9.1 billion last year, according to the American Farm Bureau. Exports of farm products to China fell by $1.3 billion in the first half of the year, the agriculture group said this month.

A report from the Agriculture Department this month found that Canadian wheat exports to China have “rocketed” this year, while exports from the United States have plunged.

The administration has tried to mollify farmers by rolling out two financial aid packages totaling $28 billion. . . . But as the trade fight gets uglier, farmers are beginning to panic. Last week, Mr. Trump said he would increase tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to 30 percent and impose a 15 percent tax on another $300 billion worth later this year. China has already said it will no longer buy American agricultural products and announced on Friday that it would raise tariffs on $75 billion of exports from America.

The trade conflict’s toll on farmers is spreading to the manufacturers that serve them. Deere & Company, the maker of agricultural equipment, said this month that it was cutting its profit forecast for the second time this year. The company’s chief executive said farmers were delaying purchases because of concerns about access to export markets.

Mr. Trump is also trying to appease corn farmers who complain that an Environmental Protection Agency decision this month will hamper ethanol production. Farmers say the agency’s decision to exempt small oil refineries from a requirement to blend corn-based ethanol into gasoline has led to a drop in demand for the fuel.

At Minnesota’s Farmfest, it was clear that Mr. Perdue’s Southern charm could go only so far. His answers to questions about how the trade war with China would end were curt, and his quip about whining farmers left some with a sour taste.

But many farmers continue support Mr. Trump and express hope that [Trump] the president knows what he is doing in his dealings with China. A July survey from Farm Journal found that 79 percent of 1,100 farmers still back Mr. Trump despite the lack of progress in negotiations with China. And Mr. Perdue largely remains an effective emissary, with the industry still hoping Mr. Trump can pull off the kind of trade deal he has been promising.

Putting one's hope in a liar and con man doesn't strike me as a smart thing to do, yet Trump's continued calls to white nationalism seem to drown out all common sense in some circles. 

America’s Credibility Abroad Is Gone

Traveling to France and the United Kingdom last September, the husband and I found that Americans are still much liked.  The same cannot be said for the Trump/Pence regime which is pretty much widely loathed and for good reason.  The buffoon in the White House - who in his extreme narcissism thinks himself a genius - has made it very obvious that longstanding treaties and alliances mean nothing. And that's not even factoring the Trump initiated trade wars that are harming American consumers who pay the tariffs in the form of higher prices - even as Trump lies to his moronic base and tells them the foreign nations are paying the tariffs.  The long term damage to America's interests will last for years even after Trump is gone from the White House with America's trustworthiness being questioned.  A piece in Slate looks at the damage done to date and how all of us will pay a price.  Here are article highlights: 

Remember Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran? These days, you can bet that the leaders of Iran do.

The letter, sent in March 2015, was one of those events that seemed like a major outrage at the time but now feels like such ancient history that the letter might as well have been written on parchment. At the height of the debate over the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, the Arkansas senator organized a group of 47 Republican colleagues to send a letter to the “leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” explaining “features of our Constitution … which you should consider seriously as negotiations progress.” Noting that any deal would be merely an “executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei” rather than a formal treaty ratified by Congress and that Barack Obama would be leaving office in January 2017, the letter warned that the next president would revoke it “with the stroke of a pen.”

[T]he thing is, Cotton was completely right: On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal the Obama administration had negotiated and re-imposed sanctions lifted as part of it. Tensions between the two countries have been rising ever since.

The five other countries that were party to the deal and the European Union are still committed to it, as is Iran, but just barely. This week, Iranian nuclear officials announced that they had quadrupled the country’s uranium enrichment production, putting them on a path to exceed limits set by the accord.

If the Iranian regime stays in compliance with the deal, it may be only because they know Trump won’t be in office forever, either. Most of the Democratic candidates running for president in 2020 have promised to rejoin the Iran deal, which would entail lifting the sanctions that Trump has re-imposed. 

Waiting out the Trump administration is a popular idea these days. Susan Thornton, the former acting assistant secretary of state, told a gathering in Shanghai earlier this month that China should be patient amid the ongoing trade war and not rush to resolve it, telling the audience, “If this skeptical attitude towards talking diplomacy continues in this administration, you might have to wait till another administration.” The parties to the Paris climate agreement may also be somewhat heartened that every major Democratic candidate has pledged to keep the U.S. in the agreement. (The U.S. will technically still be a party to the Paris agreement until November 2020 at the earliest, despite Trump’s withdrawal announcement in 2017.)
 This isn’t a very encouraging state of affairs, and not only because there’s a decent chance Trump will be reelected in 2020. If it becomes the norm that agreements struck by a U.S. president will be kept only so long as that president’s party is in power, why would any country ever sign a deal with the U.S. ever again? If the entire disposition of U.S. foreign policy transforms depending on whether a Democrat or a Republican occupies the White House, it will have a destabilizing impact on international relations long after Trump leaves office.
 But presidents of both parties have, at the very least, shared a disposition toward international alliances and broad policy objectives that contrasts with domestic political divides.
 In today’s U.S. political climate, all issues are becoming culture war issues, and more and more official U.S. policies abroad are coming to resemble the Mexico City Policy—switches to be flipped on or off depending on which domestic constituency the party in power wants to appeal to.
 This dynamic has only been getting more acute in recent years. The near impossibility of getting Republican support meant that Obama had to carry out most of his signature diplomatic achievements—the Iran deal, the Paris accord, the normalization of relations with Cuba—via executive action. That also meant those achievements could be undone by executive action.
 Meanwhile, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of negotiations for the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia. Even the Universal Postal Union hasn’t been safe.

Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates, to the extent they discuss foreign policy at all, emphasize the importance of rebuilding international alliances. If any of them becomes president, he or she would probably work to rejoin many of the deals and institutions that Trump has pulled out of and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to those, notably NATO, that Trump has simply trashed. But it will be immeasurably more difficult for the next Democratic president to replicate even the limited diplomatic achievements of the Obama years. Why would the leader of any U.S. adversary want to repeat the experience of Iran or Cuba by spending political capital on a rapprochement with the U.S., only to see the offer humiliatingly rescinded by the next president?

The problem isn’t just treaties and agreements. The way Americans view the world, and other countries, is increasingly polarized. Polls show increasing divergences between the parties in views on Mexico, Iran, Russia, Germany, Canada, and other countries. Iran may not be particularly popular on either side of the aisle, but prominent voices on Democratic foreign policy, including Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, have been arguing that Saudi Arabia is viewed as worse. Whether you think the Iranians or the Saudis are a bigger threat to human rights and regional stability may soon become an indicator of partisan loyalty.
 Countries may never be entirely neutral topics in each other’s partisan politics—the U.S. certainly hasn’t always been. But at least the ideal state of affairs is that they’re willing to conduct business with whatever party is in power. And that only works if there’s at least a certain level of continuity in foreign policy outlook and strategic goals as well as a baseline willingness to honor agreements signed by the previous administration, even if the new one doesn’t like them very much. If current trends continue, America’s partisan divide will continue to widen, and foreign policy questions will increasingly be treated as culture war fights between the parties.
 If future presidents share Trump’s disdain for international institutions and agreements, the credibility of U.S. foreign policy stances will suffer. And if these partisan swings become predicable—in other words, if countries know in advance that certain U.S. policies and agreements only apply when one party or another is in office—it will increase incentives for foreign powers to try to influence and meddle in U.S. elections. What’s a few cyberattacks or Facebook ad buys when the entire foreign policy outlook of the most powerful country is at stake?

Americans are increasingly living in two different countries at home. Soon we may be treated as two different countries abroad as well.

Nancy Pelosi - Desperate Republicans' Straw Bogeyman

The 2018 midterm elections are some 80+ days away and Republicans are finding that the Trump/GOP tax cut is falling flat with their constituents who likely have seen little change in their take home pay - and may be in shock when they have to pay when they file their taxes in April, 2019 (small businesses are losing many deductions as well). Then there is Der Trumpenführer  trade war and tariff wars with China and Europe disputes that will likely hit Trump voting counties hard as retaliatory tariffs are continued to be levied against America. Add to this rising health insurance premiums due to Trump/GOP sabotage of the Affordable Health Care Act and GOP proposals to slash Medicaid and Medicare benefits.  Republicans have little to run on other than harping on anti-immigrant and racist talking points.  Hence congressional Republicans need another foil to run against.  The answer?  Nancy Pelosi, the woman male Republicans love to hate.  A column in the New York Times looks at this construct of a straw bogeyman by desperate and hypocrisy-filled Republicans.   Here are excerpts:. 

Normally, a party that gives away $2 trillion without worrying about where the money will come from can buy itself at least a few votes. But Donald Trump’s tax cut remains remarkably unpopular, and Republicans barely mention it on the campaign trail — in fact, Democrats are running against the tax cut more than Republicans are running on it.

Nor are Republicans talking much about Trump’s trade war, which also remains unpopular.

What, then, does the G.O.P. have to run on? It can hype the supposed menace from illegal immigrants — but that hasn’t been gaining much traction, either. Instead, Republicans’ attack ads have increasingly focused on one of their usual boogeymen — or, rather, a boogeywoman: Nancy Pelosi, the former and possibly future speaker of the House.

[I]t’s interesting to ask why she [Pelosi] gets so little credit with the news media, and hence with the general public, for her accomplishments.  What has Pelosi achieved?

First, as House minority leader, she played a crucial role in turning back George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security.

Then she was the key figure, arguably even more crucial than President Barack Obama, in passing the Affordable Care Act, which produced a spectacular fall in the number of uninsured Americans and has proved surprisingly robust even in the face of Trumpian sabotage. She helped enact financial reform, which has turned out to be more vulnerable to being undermined, but still helped stabilize the economy and protected many Americans from fraud.

Pelosi also helped pass the Obama stimulus plan, which economists overwhelmingly agree mitigated job losses from the financial crisis, as well as playing a role in laying the foundation for a green energy revolution.

It’s quite a record. Oh, and whenever you hear Republicans claim that Pelosi is some kind of wild-eyed leftist, ask yourself, what’s so radical about protecting retirement income, expanding health care and reining in runaway bankers?

It’s probably also worth noting that Pelosi has been untouched by allegations of personal scandal, which is amazing given the right’s ability to manufacture such allegations out of thin air.

[H]ow does Pelosi stack up against the four Republicans who have held the speaker’s position since the G.O.P. took control of the House in 1994?

Newt Gingrich was a blowhard who shut down the government in a failed attempt to blackmail Bill Clinton into cutting Medicare, then led the impeachment of Clinton over an affair even as he himself was cheating on his wife.

Dennis Hastert, we now know, had a history of molesting teenage boys. Personal behavior aside, the “Hastert rule,” under which Republicans could support only legislation approved by a majority of their own party, empowered extremists and made America less governable.

John Boehner didn’t do much except oppose everything Obama proposed, including measures that were crucial to dealing with the aftermath of the financial crisis.

And Paul Ryan, the current but departing speaker, is a flimflam man: a fake deficit hawk whose one legislative achievement is a budget-busting tax cut, a fake policy wonk whose budget proposals were always obvious smoke and mirrors, pretending to address the budget deficit but actually just redistributing income from the poor to the rich.
 Looking at modern House speakers, then, Pelosi stands out as a giant among midgets. But you’d never know that from her media coverage.

While in office, Hastert was generally portrayed as a stolid embodiment of middle-American values. Ryan was for years the recipient of fawning media coverage, which lauded him as the ultimate serious, honest conservative long after his phoniness was obvious to anyone who paid attention. But Pelosi is typically referred to as “divisive.”

Why?

Her policy stances are far less at odds with public opinion than, say, Ryan’s attempts to privatize Medicare and slash its funding. So what makes her “divisive”? The fact that Republicans keep attacking her? That would happen to any Democrat.

Or maybe it’s just the fact that she’s a woman — a woman who happens to have been far better at her job than any man in recent memory.

Does all this mean that Pelosi should become speaker again if Democrats retake the House? Not necessarily: You can make an argument for a new face despite her extraordinary record.

But her achievements really have been remarkable. It’s a sad commentary on Republicans that they have nothing to run on except demonizing a politician whose track record makes them look pathetic. And it’s a sad commentary on the news media that so much reporting echoes these baseless attacks.