Patriotism Doesn't Pay The Bills.
The underwhelming reaction among farm groups to the news this morning that the Trump administration is doling out $4.7 billion to producers hurt by low prices comes as no surprise. It's the first payment of the $12 billion that the White House will give to American farmers to make up for their losses created by Trump's commitment to wrecking trade deals that up to now have been a bonanza for farmers in this country. In making the announcement about this first payout, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said, "Farmers cannot pay their bills with simple patriotism."
Perdue's condescending observation assumes that farmers are willing patriots in the gratuitous "trade war" that Trump drafted them into. This is total baloney, of course, as agriculture groups have been resoundingly opposed to the tariff tit-for-tats that Trump initiated. Of the price collapse that has occurred in the soybean and corn markets, American Soybean Association President John Heisdorffer said last Spring "we have been warning the administration and members of Congress that this would happen." Farm groups have been kicking and screaming about this for many months, and now that their predictions have come expensively to pass the Trump administration suddenly calls them "patriots?" Give me a break.
More financially to the point, this measly payoff that the administration is handing out strikes me as a combination of hush money and charitable aid. Of the former, I guarantee it won't hush up our ag producers, and of the latter, it isn't enough to make anybody close to whole. Sounding off from the get-go, National Corn Growers Association President Kevin Skunes said "this plan provides virtually no relief to farmers" after pointing out that the program allocates $96 million to corn farmers, who collectively stand to lose $6 billion during the course of this debacle. Soybean farmers stand to get $3.6 billion of the dole-out, but that won't even cover half their total loss of about $9 billion that the recent market plunge has cost them.
It looks like South Dakota's share of the corn and soybean relief money will cover maybe a third of the $1 billion that has been lost by the state to the tariff wars. Our Congressional delegation hasn't said much about this payoff, but Missouri Republican Senator Ray Blunt has had the courage to speak out, saying "no farmer is going to come close to being made whole" by these payments, which aren't much of a short-term fix. Nor do they come with any long-term hope, much less promise, that the Trump administration is working to keep our lucrative foreign markets open to American farmers.
Read more: http://theconstantcommoner.blogspot.com/2018/08/patriots-shmatriots-patriotism-doesnt.html
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