Ruining our markets

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PUBLISHED SAT, AUG 10 2019 9:15 AM EDT
UPDATED SAT, AUG 10 2019 9:43 AM EDT
Emma Newburger

U.S. farmers lost one of their biggest customers this week 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 have struggled through record flooding and an extreme heat wave that destroyed crop yields, and trade war escalations that have lowered prices and profits this year.

“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” ...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/10/trump-is-ruining-our-markets-farmers-lose-a-huge-customer-to-trade-war----china.html

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1. Deere's dealers reel from trade war

By Rajesh Kumar Singh
Reuters August 9, 2019

CHICAGO (Reuters) - When China announced this week that it had stopped buying U.S. agricultural products and might impose additional tariffs on farm shipments from America, Dave Schmidt braced for another blow to his business.

The Salem, Wisconsin-based dealer of Deere & Co's <DE.N> tractors, planters and combines is grappling with declining sales and higher levels of inventory as farmers have put off equipment purchases in the wake of rain-delayed planting in the Midwest and the yearlong Sino-U.S. trade standoff.

Schmidt says sales at his dealership, in general, declined by as much as 15% in the first half of the year, led by a fall in the demand for large equipment. In a sign of things to come, early orders for planting equipment for next season's soybean and corn crops are down up to 25%.

He is not alone. Half a dozen dealers of Deere's agriculture equipment across the Midwest shared similar accounts in interviews with Reuters. One of those dealers, in Geneseo, Illinois, said sales at his dealership were down 50% so far this year from the same period last year ...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/farm-equipment-maker-deeres-dealers-171312197.html

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2. Navarro insists trade war isn't bad for consumers

President Trump Opens a New Window. threatened to hit China with more tariffs Opens a New Window. in a few weeks, but the administration downplayed concerns that the move will hurt American consumers.

“There’s a lot of people who are saying, incorrectly, that somehow the American consumer is bearing the burden of these China tariffs. And it’s just false,” Peter Navarro, director of the White House National Trade Council, told FOX Business' Gerry Baker on Friday.

Trump said he plans to impose a 10 percent tariff on an additional $300 billion in imports from Beijing, including popular consumer items. The trade war between the world's two largest economies continued to escalate this week, when China said it would stop buying American agricultural products in retaliation ...

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/china-trade-war-bad-for-consumers-or-not

[Wellstone ruled]

3. So John Deere workers in the USA take it in the Pocket

books once again. But,Deere will be increasing equipment sales in Brazil and Africa as well as Australia.

And so much of Deere equipment is now made in India. Going to get damn tough for those Men and Women who work the assembly plants in and around Waterloo. The other place to watch is Ag-co-Alis in Jackson Minnesota.