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<\/a>Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, blasted President Donald Trump in a very frank radio interview yesterday. The main take from what he said is that China is already a \u201clost market\u201d for American farmers due to Trump\u2019s tariff war with China and that it will take \u201cdecades\u201d to get it back if that is even possible. Johnson concluded, \u201cIt\u2019s going to take much different behavior from future presidents in order to repair this damage.\u201d<\/p>\nThe interview was on KFGO radio in Fargo, North Dakota. This farm union represents 200,000 family farms, ranches, and fishing enterprises in 33 states in the U.S. Johnson, it should be said, is also a registered Democrat voter.<\/p>\n
IMO, Johnson spewed out a lot of common sense and wisdom in his remarks about more than farm products. He\u00a0said of Trump\u2019s tariff war imposed unwillingly on China, \u201cI would \u2026 argue that it would be far more effective if we did it with the rest of world, instead of first ticking off the rest of the world and then trying to do it all by ourself.\u201d Johnson further said of the self-proclaimed Great Deal Maker that he has \u201coffended the leaders of pretty much every ally we have on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening is that China is taking its business to buy needed food products elsewhere. That\u2019s why Johnson says Trump\u2019s tariffs are \u201cvery harmful to agriculture; all the trade disruption has been enormously damaging\u201d to U.S. farmers.<\/p>\n
Johnson continued, \u201ca lot of folks believe that China needs to be held accountable.\u201d Yet he also said, \u201cYou\u2019re increasingly going to find people who sort of say, \u2018This was just a mistake. This isn\u2019t the way you solve a real problem. It\u2019s just making things worse.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson explained, \u201cI don\u2019t think you can expect to make the fundamental changes that are being asked of China while every other day you\u2019re offending them, you\u2019re forcing them to lose face. No country\u2019s going to make changes when they\u2019re embarrassed along the way. That\u2019s just not how you do things.\u201d So much for the man in the book, The Art of the Deal<\/em>.<\/p>\nTrump is always saying, \u201cI love our farmers.\u201d Yeah, sure. Let\u2019s see now, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), following President Trump\u2019s orders, recently rolled back regulations regarding the burning of methane gas at oil wells. I lived in Texas for nearly forty years and not far from the Houston Ship Channel where all the oil refineries are. I always wondered why the federal government wouldn\u2019t stop those oil companies from burning all that methane at their wells which all of us Texans had to breathe.<\/p>\n
This wasteful burning of methane at oil wells makes an enormous contribution to our U.S. emissions footprint. Trump also granted waivers to 31 oil fineries to not have to produce corn-based ethanol anymore, which (I think) has already caused the price of corn to drop. Farmers are feeling less and less loved from this White House.<\/p>\n
Due to the imbalance in exports between the U.S. and China\u2019s years of misdeeds toward U.S. intellectual property of companies that do business in China, Trump slaps China with big tariffs, like taxes, on Chinese imports to the U.S. China naturally retaliates by doing the same, in this case, largely against U.S. farm products exported to China, such as soybeans and grains. Trump foolishly says, \u201ctariff wars are easy to win.\u201d Easy for who? It takes two to tango. Almost all authorities disagree.<\/p>\n
Midwestern farmers were a big part of Trump winning the presidential election in 2016.\u00a0KFGO\u2019s Joel Heitkamp said of his shocking interview with Johnson, \u201cYou can see how mad AG [agriculture] producers are when they see that big oil got the exemptions \u2026 it\u2019s like the light finally got turned on and some of these guys woke up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said net farm income is down half what it was six years ago. He lamented, \u201cThis is really tough. We\u2019re in a really, really difficult spot right now.\u201d Yeah, and U.S. farmers having been suffering from years of drought. If matters continue like this much longer with Trump\u2019s tariffs, a lot of farm families will go out of business while the big farm operations will survive.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, blasted President Donald Trump in a very frank radio interview yesterday. The main take from what he said is that China is already a \u201clost market\u201d for American farmers due to Trump\u2019s tariff war with China and that it will take \u201cdecades\u201d to get it back if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1477,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2660],"tags":[734,4533,4530],"class_list":["post-10221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-national-farmers-union","tag-roger-johnson"],"yoast_head":"\n
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