Mr. “I alone can fix it” continues to lie for the sake of justifying the unsupportable. Recently he got it wrong about farmers and soybeans, claiming the fall in prices resulted from “bad (terrible) Trade Deals” (it didn’t). Since much of his base is rural and agrarian, let’s see if they ignore the fiction. Maybe City Boy Donald got confused between a major crop export and the Asian menu item . Here’s the truth.
Soybeans are our largest crop export ($21.6 billion annually). Production has increased dramatically in the last 5 years since the disastrous drought of 2012. As farmers and other watchers understand, when the harvest decreases, prices increase (no water = poor harvest). Prices peaked in drought-stricken 2012 due to depressed production. It’s the well respected “supply and demand” equation at work.
In retaliation for trump’s foolish tariffs, China has placed its own tariff on American soybeans, perhaps intentionally targeting trump’s putative electoral base. What are the takeaways from trump’s latest foray into fantasy?
- Soybean prices have, indeed, fallen from 2012 peaks but due to increased supply, not “bad (terrible) Trade Deals.”
- Soybean prices have fallen by more than 1/3, not the 50% bleated by trump.
- The ebb and flow of crop demand and production is well known to farmers, but will they see through trump’s rhetoric?
- trump’s lack of understanding international macro-economics will hurt the very farmers he thought he was helping. Duh!
Get the full FactCheck.org story here.
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