Newenglanddeac
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Trump’s trade agenda is on a collision course with his rural voters’ economic interests
Rural America has backed Republicans for decades, but it gave unusually strong support to Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, with Iowa scoring the biggest D-to-R shift of any state in the union. It’s interesting, then, that one of the segments of the business community with the biggest concern about Trump’s policies is agribusiness. This sector enjoys traditional Republican priorities like lax environmental regulation and eliminating the estate tax, but could suffer enormously from trade wars that Trump might initiate.
One clear sign of that is a letter sent this week from a wide range of farm sector stakeholders, ranging from the North American Meat Institute to the American Soybean Association to the US Dry Bean Council urging Trump not to blow up NAFTA.
Beyond the specifics of NAFTA, the objective economic interests of rural America are systematically opposed to those of Trump’s beloved Rust Belt manufacturing workers. The farm sector is a large net exporter that depends heavily on foreign trade to sustain income and employment. It will inevitably bear the brunt of any retaliatory measures imposed by foreign countries on the United States. The result is that Trump’s policy agenda is on a collision course with one of the bulwarks of his political support.
America’s farmers love trade deals
The letter, though politely phrased, is unambiguous, arguing that the “increased market access under NAFTA has been a windfall for U.S. farmers, ranchers and food processors.”
It also makes the point that trade in general is central to economic opportunity in rural America because “with the productivity of U.S. agriculture growing faster than domestic demand, the U.S. food and agriculture industry — and the rural communities that depend on it — relies heavily on export markets to sustain prices and revenues.” Or in case that wasn’t clear: “growing exports have increasingly become a vital share and important source of value to U.S. production.”
Agribusiness had really been hoping the United States would ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, according to the Farm Bureau, would have increased net farm income by $4.4 billion annually.
The soybean industry is particularly worried about Trump’s policies, with American Soybean Association president Ron Moore issuing a statement condemning TPP withdrawal and noting that “we export more than half the soy we grow here in the United States, and still more in the form of meat and other products that are produced with our meal and oil.” Indeed, when the Peterson Institute for International Economics models the possible impact of trade war scenarios with China, it sees the soybean sector as bearing some of the most severe negative consequences since China could retaliate by curbing soybean imports.
Trump’s trade agenda is on a collision course with his rural voters’ economic interests
Rural America has backed Republicans for decades, but it gave unusually strong support to Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy, with Iowa scoring the biggest D-to-R shift of any state in the union. It’s interesting, then, that one of the segments of the business community with the biggest concern about Trump’s policies is agribusiness. This sector enjoys traditional Republican priorities like lax environmental regulation and eliminating the estate tax, but could suffer enormously from trade wars that Trump might initiate.
One clear sign of that is a letter sent this week from a wide range of farm sector stakeholders, ranging from the North American Meat Institute to the American Soybean Association to the US Dry Bean Council urging Trump not to blow up NAFTA.
Beyond the specifics of NAFTA, the objective economic interests of rural America are systematically opposed to those of Trump’s beloved Rust Belt manufacturing workers. The farm sector is a large net exporter that depends heavily on foreign trade to sustain income and employment. It will inevitably bear the brunt of any retaliatory measures imposed by foreign countries on the United States. The result is that Trump’s policy agenda is on a collision course with one of the bulwarks of his political support.
America’s farmers love trade deals
The letter, though politely phrased, is unambiguous, arguing that the “increased market access under NAFTA has been a windfall for U.S. farmers, ranchers and food processors.”
It also makes the point that trade in general is central to economic opportunity in rural America because “with the productivity of U.S. agriculture growing faster than domestic demand, the U.S. food and agriculture industry — and the rural communities that depend on it — relies heavily on export markets to sustain prices and revenues.” Or in case that wasn’t clear: “growing exports have increasingly become a vital share and important source of value to U.S. production.”
Agribusiness had really been hoping the United States would ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, according to the Farm Bureau, would have increased net farm income by $4.4 billion annually.
The soybean industry is particularly worried about Trump’s policies, with American Soybean Association president Ron Moore issuing a statement condemning TPP withdrawal and noting that “we export more than half the soy we grow here in the United States, and still more in the form of meat and other products that are produced with our meal and oil.” Indeed, when the Peterson Institute for International Economics models the possible impact of trade war scenarios with China, it sees the soybean sector as bearing some of the most severe negative consequences since China could retaliate by curbing soybean imports.
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