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Trump's trade war is economic suicide


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18 minutes ago, bostonangler said:

 

Tariffs don't cost governments anything. The cost goes to consumers. And they will buy produce and pork from other countries. Where do we buy phones, TVs and all the other junk we buy?

 

B/A

They cost guberments when people stop buying the items with tariffs. 

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5 minutes ago, jaybake said:

This is the right time to deal with the Chinese government.  If not now, then when and by who?  It is very important to deal with the Chinese illegal activities before it is too late.  Once they become a military and economic power, no one could stand up against them.  They would do anything they want without any constrain. Yes, it is painful to deal with them now, but we have to learn to deal with it. 

 

You know we withdrew from the Pacific Trade deal which China was not a part of? You cannot flip a switch and turn off China. If you do you will feel a lot of pain... Which we are beginning to see. Had the Pacific trade deal stayed in place we could have slowly left them behind. Once again the political moves are for instant gratification and not long term planning. Our current administration is clueless on how things work globally. Dealing with real estate isn't the same as dealing with a global economy. I don't think the administration can see past tomorrow when it comes to consequences. Think about things like your Dinar. These things take years, they do not happen overnight to serve someone's ego. Easing out of the unfair trade with China could have been a win win. Now it's going to be a hurt hurt and I don't think a lot of crybaby Americans are going to be able to take the sacrifice. I think China is going to wait this one out. JMHO

 

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5 minutes ago, Pitcher said:

Rafiki1 brought it to my attention that we should not do it.  Too many people on the board with major problems

 

Thanks I'll keep that in mind... Just so everyone knows all the vehicles I listed are over 10 years old and have lots of miles... A regular oil change is a good thing,

 

B/A

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6 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

Believe me you don't want to see farmers going under. 

 

I don't... I support them by  buying produce and meats every week... They have it tough and our government needs to understand their markets are leaving... Without foreign markets they will certainly go broke.

 

B/A

Edited by bostonangler
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3 minutes ago, Pitcher said:

Look up who is buying up USA farm land.  Incredible 

 

 

This is what I found

 

What foreign country owns the most land in the United States?
for agricultural land, privately owned: Canadian investors own the most reported foreign held agricultural and non-agricultural land, with 28 percent, or 7,250,834 acres. Foreign persons from the Netherlands own 19 percent, Germany owns 7, the United Kingdom owns 6 and Portugal owns 5.Jul 2, 2017
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WOW

 

 

The new target for farmland investment: The United States. The most recent figures from USDA, dating from 2011, show that roughly 25 million acres, about 2 percent of our national total of 930,000,000 acres, are in foreign hands. And the pace of investment seems to be picking up. In the period since USDA’s 2011 report, foreign investors have gone on shopping sprees in the heartland and beyond. Saudi Arabia and the UAE alone have acquired more than 15,000 acres in Arizona and Southern California to grow fodder for dairy cattle. Italian buyers are reported to have purchased 102,000 acres in Missouri, and New Zealand some 18,000.

The most memorable deal—though most coverage treated it as a corporate acquisition rather than a resource grab—was the 2013 acquisition of America’s largest producer of pork, the Smithfield Company, by a Chinese company called Shuanghui—which subsequently changed its name to the WH Group. The company is an independent entity, but it has received substantial funding from the Chinese government. It’s probably not overstating much to say that the government of China now controls more than 400 American farms consisting of a hundred thousand acres of farmland, with at least 50,000 in Missouri alone, plus CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), 33 processing plants, the distribution system—and one out of every four American hogs.

 

 

Smithfield is a “vertically integrated” company, meaning that it owns everything right down to the feed supply and all the way up the food chain to the many brands of processed and packaged foods distributed throughout the United States and the world.  However, one could make the argument that the most important assets within this $4.72 billion sale are the farmland and the water.

 

States like Iowa have banned the sale of farmland to foreign buyers and others have laws that limit the number of acres that can legally be sold, but it can be quite tricky to tell who is doing the buying.

 

One thing that is clear is the lack of a universal national policy governing water rights and water use. In states that are water insecure in the Southwest, there is a dizzying and arcane array of regulations that are barely equal now to the challenges of current domestic use, much less answering the needs of foreign agriculture. It seems the barest common sense that there should be some federal entity protecting citizens’ rights to water against anonymous industrial agribusiness. As yet that has not happened. And while California and the Southwest would seem the most obvious areas that will face serious water challenges in the future, we have already seen similar drought conditions playing out in other states, such as Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Eventually we may find that dry states must be supplied in some measure by wet states. Logic would dictate that laws regarding water use and access should be firmly in place before selling off resources to another nation.

States like Iowa have banned the sale of farmland to foreign buyers and others have laws that limit the number of acres that can legally be sold, but it can be quite tricky to tell who is doing the buying. Foreign buyers can hide their identity by creating an American corporation, or buying through a U.S. majority-owned subsidiary.

So just how much of our farmland are we willing to sell? And who decides? Most proposed deals must go through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Established under the Ford Administration in 1975, it has broad powers to accept or deny requests for foreign acquisitions of American companies and land. After September 11, additional criteria were included under the jurisdiction of the CFIUS, including food, water, and agriculture. The committee is made up of representatives from 16 government agencies, and chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury. It includes members from the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the State Department, and the Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Justice, as well as the offices of the U.S. Trade Representative and Science and Technology Policy. Its reviews and deliberations are closed to the public, and decisions are handed down with virtually no transparency.

 

 

The dangers of high land prices are obvious—especially for younger farmers who are trying to get established and farmers who want to steer away from Big Ag approaches. The dangers of ownership by large corporations and foreign buyers are equally clear. But there is another danger to high, rapidly rising land prices—one that brings to mind the great real estate bust of 2007: a bubble. Bubbles can be devastating, leaving small land owners underwater on their mortgages and depriving them of the crucial collateral they need to get loans on operating expenses.

 

“I don’t think it’s a bubble.”

 

Could the current rise in farm prices be a bubble? Certainly if you read some headlines in Midwestern newspapers, you might get the impression not only that there’s a bubble but that it is in the process of bursting. Though farmland prices are still high, they peaked somewhere around 2013 and have fallen for three years in a row—the first time that’s happened.

“I don’t think it’s a bubble,” says Zhang. “In a bubble, you’ll see dissociation between prices and the value of the underlying assets. This time, when crop prices went down—with corn dropping from six or seven dollars a bushel in 2013 to about half that price today—the land prices dropped with them. And farmers still have some money.”

 

 

Don’t get too optimistic—or too pessimistic—just yet, though. Interest rates are creeping up. Farm income, the key factor in determining land prices, has been falling for the past three years from record highs, and USDA is predicting a fourth year of decline. On the other hand, operating costs seem to be going down. And prices in Iowa seem to have ticked up slightly, though that may be just because farmers are holding on to their property, waiting for better prices to return; farmland for sale is in short supply in Iowa. (These insights come courtesy of Professor Zhang. For much, much more, visit the invaluable Iowa Land Portal.)

Zhang himself takes a temperate view: “Despite the deteriorating agricultural financial conditions and continued decline in farm income, the current farm downturn is more likely a liquidity and working capital problem, as opposed to a solvency and balance sheet problem for the entire agricultural sector,” he writes .”Rather than an abrupt farm crisis, we are likely to [see] a gradual, drawn-out downward adjustment to the historical normal return levels for the agricultural economy. The U.S. farmland market [is] likely headed towards stabilization and potentially slightly more modest downward adjustments before bouncing back in the near future.”

If it pans out that way, Zhang’s prediction is probably good news for the economy. Is it good news for a sustainable approach to agriculture rooted in small, independent farms, enlightened farming practices, and short supply chains? That’s less obvious. At the very least, it’s going to require the progressive wing of farming to rethink its economics and its go-to-market strategies and possibly make big changes.

https://newfoodeconomy.org/who-really-owns-american-farmland/

 

B/A

 

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Just now, Pitcher said:

 

And China has been very aggressively buying land since 2018. 

 

Yeah I just posted some of that... Americans don't understand what the future holds.... I remember when young people wanted to keep their family's property and traditions. Now they all want to cash out. Take the easy money and run... Soon our empire will be like so many in the past.

 

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You all forget the word Nationalize. Things get bad we(The United States) take possession of said farms or land. 

 

Nationalization occurs when a country's government seizes the assets of corporations or resources without paying for those assets.

 

 

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I'm glad I'm old. We grew up in the greatest America. We have freedoms kids today can't imagine. We had the best music. The best cars. No social cesspool. Very few radicals and insane criminal types. We knew and enjoyed our neighbors. We could ride our bikes anywhere without fear. Our biggest crime as kids was stealing cigarettes and smoking them out back. When we were bullied, we had a fight and it was over. We could fish and hunt. Cops would give you a ride home if you had too much to drink. Now everything we do is illegal. Everywhere we go we are being watched. You can't speak your mind without an attack from haters. Yup we grew up in the best of times and I'm glad I'm old enough to have enjoyed it but still young enough to remember it!!!

 

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1 hour ago, Pitcher said:

The entire foreign owned US farmland is about the size of Tennessee 

 

I personally would equate this to foreign companies investing in America. And when one considers how very small a portion of the actual farm land in America they own, 

 

915 million acres. . . in the United States is farmland. 915 millionacres. 2.1 million farms and ranches

 

 

I'm not going to worry about this just yet

 
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U.S. stocks rose after the Trump administration announced it would be removing some goods from its proposed tariff list and delaying tariffs on others beyond the previous September 1 deadline. The news sent bond yields higher, after the curve flattened the most in more than a decade earlier in the session.

Here were the main moves in the market, as of 9:51 a.m. ET:

  • S&P 500 (^GSPC😞 +1.51%, or 43.49 points

  • Dow (^DJI😞 +1.35%, or 348.53 points

  • Nasdaq (^IXIC😞 +1.73%, or 135.18 points

  • 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX😞 +4.3 bps to 1.68%

  • U.S. dollar to onshore Chinese yuan rate (CNY=X😞 +0.0992% to 7.0647

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced Tuesday that products including “cell phones, laptop computers, video game consoles, certain toys, computer monitors, and certain items of footwear and clothing” would not be hit with a 10% tariff until December 15. Originally, President Donald Trump announced at the start of August that he would be imposing a 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports starting September 1, which would have included many of these products.

The USTR also announced some goods would not be added to the tariff list, as previously expected.

“Certain products are being removed from the tariff list based on health, safety, national security and other factors and will not face additional tariffs of 10 percent,” the USTR said in a statement.

The announcement came after China’s vice premier Liu He spoke with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over the phone Tuesday night, according to China’s state-run media agency Xinhua. Both sides agreed to conduct another call in two weeks following the discussions, which reportedly focused on the 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods,

Earlier in the session, falling bond yields and a narrowing spread between the closely watched 10-year and 2-year yields sent contracts on the three major stock indices lower before the USTR’s announcement sent shares higher.

Uncertainty about the global outlook had also added to investor jitters, with geopolitical unrest mounting everywhere from Latin America to Asia.

Argentina’s peso plummeted to a record low of about 60 per dollar Monday and remained weaker than 50-per-dollar into Tuesday’s session, after center-right President Mauricio Macri performed worse-than-expected in primary elections over the weekend. The weak performance by the more market-friendly leader sent Argentine equities tumbling, with the Global X MSCI Argentina ETF (ARGT) down more than 24% Monday before paring some losses Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, the People’s Bank of China fixed its yuan at 7.0326 per dollar Tuesday, marking the fourth straight session with the currency weaker than the psychological 7-per-dollar level. However, this was still stronger than expected by consensus analysts, according to Reuters-compiled estimates. The yuan against the U.S. dollar remains a closely monitored currency pair after the Treasury Department officially designated China a currency manipulator last week, amid an ongoing trade war with the U.S.

In Hong Kong, flights were canceled out of Hong Kong International Airport for a second consecutive day as pro-democracy protesters overtook the global transportation hub. This marked the fifth straight day that activists flooded the airport, with sit-ins starting in one of the busiest commuter centers in the world starting Friday.

Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 12, 2019. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
 
Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., August 12, 2019. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
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Shares of Cathay Pacific (0293.HK), a Hong Kong-based airline, fell 2.5% Tuesday on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, extending Monday’s declines. The airline said over the weekend that it would cooperate with China’s aviation authority prohibiting staff members who supported the Hong Kong protests from flying to and over mainland China.

Thousands of Hong Kongers have been galvanized to demonstrate against certain Hong Kong policies and police activities. Protests have now stretched into an eleventh week, after initial demonstrations were sparked over a government proposal for an extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to mainland China for trials. While Beijing has condemned the demonstrations and thrown support to Hong Kong’s government to contain protesters, the Chinese government has not initiated military action into Hong Kong, which many observers said would be regarded as a move further undercutting Hong Kong’s semiautonomy.

 

Consumer prices rose in-line with expectations in July

Meanwhile, new economic data released Tuesday underscored still-muted inflationary pressures in the U.S., with consumer prices edging up at a near-expected pace in July.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’s headline consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.3% month-over-month in July, as anticipated. Over the last 12 months, consumer prices rose 1.8%, slightly above the 1.7% increase expected and June’s 1.6% increase, driven by a rise in gas and housing prices.

Excluding more volatile food and energy prices, CPI rose 0.3% month-over-month and 2.2% year-over-year in July, slightly ahead of the unchanged 2.1% pace from June expected.

While CPI is not the Federal Reserve’s mostly closely watched measure of inflation, it provides another gauge of consumer price fluctuations. July’s results reinforced the latest personal consumptions expenditures (PCE) price index – the Fed’s preferred inflation measure – which showed tepid inflation for June

 

 

Good new?

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Hong Kong protesters sing US anthem, with US flags, against Chinese tyranny during airport occupation

(VIDEO) Hong Kong protesters sing US anthem, with US flags, against Chinese tyranny during airport occupation

 Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators take to the street of Hong Kong on June 9, 2019, to protest against the extradition bill being put forward by the Hong Kong government, which the people of Hong Kong fear could be used as a political tool by the Beijing central government to arrest and transfer political activists who are against the Chinese government to the mainland. (Chan Long Hei/SOPA Images/Zuma Press/TNS)

Hong Kong’s citizens have begun waving American flags and singing the U.S. National Anthem amid ongoing protests against China’s control

 

Videos on social media show Hong Kong citizens holding American flags and singing the anthem through bullhorns in what appears to be a show of solidarity and demonstration for their freedom.

 
 

 
 

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw posted a video of the singing citizens and said, “Hong Kong is a modern-day struggle between tyrannical rule and free democracy. Protesters stand bravely in the face of violence to combat China’s authoritarian regime. They remind us why we value our freedom in America, and should stand by their side as they fight for theirs.

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