|
| I'm going to respectfully disagree. We can have a honest discussion about the effects of political decisions without judging the political decisions themselves. For example, if the government had seriously cut farm subsidies in the Farm Bill we could argue the political wisdom or necessity of it separately from the effect it will have on markets and prices.
The fact is, if China goes thru with their tariffs on soybeans July 6th, it will have a dramatic effect on our markets & prices, irrespective of who's to blame but we can talk about those effects in an objective way.
For instance, over the past ten days the price of soybeans has declined quite dramatically. It is possible that crop condition and the planted acres are important factors. It's also very likely that the impending tariffs are responsible. But it's very likely that they both contribute to the price.
At present the crop condition and possible tariffs are confounded. By the end of June we will know planted acres and we already know that crop conditions are generally favorable. I think we can agree that those factors, crop condition & planted acres, are or will be figured in to the price by July 1st.
But six days later, on July 6th, the tariffs will become reality (or not, depending on last minute developments). Assuming that crop conditions stay more or less the same, I think we can say that any market moves just before or after July 6th can be assigned to the tariffs.
Now you can argue that traders have already hedged in some of the market move due to the tariff since a couple of months ago, maybe even a good bit of it within just the past 20 day but we will get some sense for it for real ten days from now. It will be very interesting to see what happens.
After all, we haven't had a real tit-for-tat trade war for some eighty years. As the Chinese say, may you not live in "interesting times".
Edited by farmer4321 6/25/2018 20:55
| |
|
Lets lay out some non political market factors as a group
