Discussion: Trump Says Farmers Can Benefit From Developer-Friendly Wetlands Rollback

Most American farmers LOVE taking huge USDA subsidies, funded by the taxpayer, while they HATE anyone telling them what to do with their land, even though their actions can have long-term, wide-ranging adverse off-site impacts.

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Well, lessee, first of all, when he says people were crying with gratitude over a thing he did, that is not a thing that happened. Second of all the stable genius said this morning how happy he was to go to Nashville, Tennessee and talk to the farmers. He likes farmers! And he likes Tennessee! Except New Orleans is where he was going. Finger on the pulse! The tweet is now deleted. I’d love to know if they help him figure out which shoe goes on which foot these days. Oh, and here’s a quote:

Trump to the American Farm Bureau convention on Sen. John Kennedy: “This is a man who is totally brilliant. I don’t know if you know what this means: Oxford. He went to Oxford. I’m very much into the world of schools. Oxford – you have to be very, very smart to go to Oxford.”

“I’m very much into the world of schools.” And then the stable genius came home again jiggity-jig. He had a big day!

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These stories make me mad AND extremely concerned. Will this country be worth living in once donnie and his minions are done with it???

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Thanks…I needed a laugh. I was almost expecting “Oxford…it’s the best type of shoe. The best . And I know shoes. People are saying how much I know about shoes. No one knows more.”

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Yeah, I loved his explaining what Oxford was because they don’t know what it means what with all the time they spend churning the butter and so forth, they’re too busy to have heard of famous universities very much. Farmers love being talked to that way by New York boys.

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“The EPA has done its job, now all of us in this room have to help to get this over the finish line,” Zippy Duvall, head of the American Farm Bureau Federation, told the Tennessee farm crowd then.

Oh, Zippy, you poor stupid hick. As if the President gives a good god damn about you and your farmers. When the water and the air are poisoned, your glorious farm will be producing fuck all. You’ll live on imported wheat, corn, and soybeans and be grateful for a loaf of bread.

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Farmers don’t want to develop wetlands. Put up housing in the middle of a farm. Who wants to live next to a hog confinement.

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If you trusted Trump with your soybean crop, just wait and see what he does to your waterways. You’ll be crying all right.

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He didn’t really say…

Never mind, of course he did.

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Trump - “This is a man who is totally brilliant. I don’t know if you know what
this means: Oxford. He went to Oxford. I’m very much into the world of
schools. Oxford – you have to be very, very smart to go to Oxford.”

Bill Clinton?

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Colossal idiot says stupid thing. Story at 11!

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Trump - “I’m very much into the world of schools.”
I’m guessing that sentence has never been said before in the English language.

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The benefit this will provide farmers will be negligible, and seems more targeted at real estate development interests.

And won’t do nearly enough to offset the harm Trump did to farmers by pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnershipl.

On December 30, some of the TPP went into effect in several of the 11 remaining TPP signatory countries, and as Quartz outlined recently, US farmers are going to be at a competitive disadvantage:

"Meaty profits
American meat producers stood to gain a hefty tariff cut the first day of the agreement, from 38.5% to 27.5% on certain beef products, and eventually down to 9% by the 16th year of the deal. US-produced pork, too, would have become immediately cheaper. Japan would have lowered its tariff to 2.2% from 4.3% at the start, and gradually reduced that to zero.

By 2026, the year by which TPP would have been fully implemented, exports of beef and pork had been expected to grow by nearly $2 billion, according to a study by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Billions worth of gains
A separate assessment, done by the US International Trade Commission by congressional mandate, estimated overall agricultural exports would jump by nearly 3%, or $7.2, billion by 2032 under TPP. (Imports into the US were expected to expand by 1.5%, or $2.7 billion.)

The TPP gains were expected to spill over into the whole agriculture sector, increasing production by an estimated $10 billion by that year.

Whole countries of customers
Abandoning TPP doesn’t just leave all those potential gains on the table; it threatens to eat into US farmers’ current business, they say.

Take wheat as an example. The only Japanese importer of the grain is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, which resells it at a hefty markup. (Other importers are subject to prohibitive tariffs.)

As soon as CPTPP goes into effect, the ministry will slash its markup for wheat from member countries by 7%, according to US Wheat Associates, a trade group that promotes wheat exporters. It will go down by another 5% in April, when the second round of Japanese cuts kicks in.

That will make Canadian and Australian wheat $14 cheaper per metric ton than American wheat, according to the group. And that difference will only grow larger as CPTPP benefits are phased in. By 2020, US wheat will cost $70 per ton more than its competitors.

If the US doesn’t do anything, the group’s president, Vince Peterson, told the Office of the US Trade Representative during a public hearing earlier this month, the market for American wheat will be gone well before then."

The entire article is here: US farmers are bracing to lose as CPTPP rolls out

Reuters also weighed in: Pacific trade pact takes off with tariffs cut in six nations

And from the Land Down Under: US farmers ‘helpless’ as TPP boosts Australia

The TPP was the first international trade agreement that included enforceable standards for labor rights, human rights and environmental protections.

People normally think of trade deals as only benefiting the economic elite by lowering trade barriers and facilitating the movement of factories and jobs to low-wage nations with little to nonexistent regulations, but the TPP had the potential to break that stalemate and the race to the bottom.

Under the TPP, we got Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA in exchange for increased access to the Asia-Pacific Rim, the fastest-growing region in the world.

Under the TPP, we persuaded protectionist economies to open up their agricultural, automotive, professional services, and financial sectors to foreign competition in order to provide American workers and exporters a level playing field; and

Under the TPP, we convinced moderately authoritarian regimes to agree to liberalize their societies and “globalize” human and labor rights by outlawing human trafficking, cracking down on forced and child labor and other human rights violations, by raising environmental and labor standards; and by allowing labor unions and a free, open and unrestricted Internet — in exchange for favorable trade conditions with us.

Some activists condemned the TPP as a blueprint for a corporate dictatorship. But the rest of the world did not see it that way. Given the above mentioned features, they saw the TPP as a piece of masterful diplomacy that would strengthen the US position – both economically as well as strategically – as well as counter China’s rise.

And it’s the strategic value of TPP in strengthening our ties with allies and partners that was noted by former Secretary of State Tillerson and former Defense Secretary Mattis.

But instead of enacting TPP and pocketing those gains, Trump tossed it without holding any hearings. And don’t think that move went unnoticed. To the Asia-Pacific region all of our previous commitments to those countries —trade as well as military — are now in doubt, and some players and adversaries in the region are becoming emboldened and more adventurous now that we have ceded ground.

And now here we are, facing a restive and anxious set of allies who are uncertain of our other commitments to them. The American farmers whose export markets are now in doubt either because of the trade war, tariffs, or, in this case, the favorable trade conditions Australian beef and wheat producers will soon receive as a benefit of membership in the TPP, are now seeing themselves sidelined.

And Trump’s attempt to strike a trade agreement with China is similarly untenable and doomed to failure because he has no agenda and no momentum: some of our key allies who might otherwise be expected to lend their support to us are currently laboring under US-imposed tariffs.

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Yep…we don’t want to protect fk all because it’s all about US. Right Donnie? I am so sick of what these fkers are doing to this country and to the inherent GREED of some people.

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I can’t even imagine W saying this. Really. At least with “is our children learning” you knew what he meant.

We are way past low bar territory.

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Of course, they give that NY boy a pass because they think he’s lying for them.

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Another thing that rules against building on swamps does is prevent developers from building complexes that sink into swamps.

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Yeah the Pres is real Buster Brown, and has anyone seen his dog Tige?

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I was expecting “Oxford. Did you know there is one in Mississippi”

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