It ain't workin' for us.
via Seattle Times:
U.S. farm bankruptcies in September surged 24% to the highest since 2011 amid strains from President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and a year of wild weather.
Growers are also becoming increasingly dependent on trade aid and other federal programs for income, figures showed in a report by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest general farm organization.
The squeeze on farmers underscores the toll China’s retaliatory tariffs have taken on a critical Trump constituency as the president enters a re-election campaign and a fight to stave off impeachment. The figures also highlight the importance of a “phase one” deal the administration is currently negotiating with Beijing to increase agriculture imports in return for a pause in escalating U.S. levies.
Almost 40% of projected farm profit this year will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, federal subsidies and insurance payments, according to the report, based on Department of Agriculture forecasts. That’s $33 billion of a projected $88 billion in income.
The trade war and two straight years of adverse weather rattled farmers already facing commodity price slumps.
Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings in the 12 months ended September rose to 580 from a year earlier. That marked the highest since 676 cases in 2011 under the chapter of the bankruptcy code tailored for farms. The total “remains well below” historical highs in the 1980s, the federation said.
Recent bankruptcies were concentrated in the 13-state Midwestern region, a key battleground in the presidential election where grain, soybean, hog and dairy farms have been hit by trade disputes. More than 40%, or 255 filings, were in the region.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman took issue with President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the economy is doing better than ever under his administration.
The economic expert wrote on Twitter Wednesday that the president's promises regarding manufacturing jobs and GDP growth have failed to materialize.
"The meh GDP numbers won't help Trump next year. But what should really scare him is his utter failure to boost manufacturing in swing states," Krugman, who is a columnist for The New York Times and won the Nobel prize in economics in 2008, wrote on Twitter. He shared a graph of manufacturing job levels over time in Wisconsin to emphasize his point.
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Krugman also explained that Trump has fallen fall short of his promises regarding GDP growth. The economist tweeted an article by The Hill from last year, which highlighted how Trump was promising that GDP growth "could be in the fives," referring to 5 percent growth or higher.
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