I posted about this earlier.. but it's pretty much playing out as Dr Flinchbaugh said it would.. when he addressed us at the Kansas Commodity Classic.

( http://www.kansasfarmer.com/farm-bill/barry-flinchbaugh-minces-no-words-when-talking-ag-policy )

Flinchbaugh warned his audience they might not agree with everything he had to say.

“This is ag policy under the Trump administration, which is to say the Age of Uncertainty and the Age of Twitter,” he said. “So you might not agree with all I say. If I thought you would, I’d rewrite my speech.”

Flinchbaugh, who has been an ag policy adviser for more than 50 years, said there are some words that are no longer in the lexicon — words like logic, stability, and consistency.

He gave the Trump administration good marks for the pick of Sonny Perdue as ag secretary and for deregulation. Flinchbaugh said the 2018 Farm Bill so far is OK, but immigration and trade are total failures.

“There is a big lesson that needs to be learned or re-learned,” he said. “This is a global economy and we aren’t going back. In 1960, about 9% of our GDP came from trade. In 2016, it was 24%. It doesn’t matter what the isolationist and the right wingnuts in Congress think they want, that’s the way it is.”

The elephant in the room is trade policy

The thing that moves agricultural products is markets, Flinchbaugh insisted. Having markets means exports to countries that need the food American farmers produce and that means having trade agreements.

That’s a lesson that somebody needs to teach the Trump administration, Flinchbaugh said.

After pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership five days into office without a single conversation with anyone who understands the value of trade to agriculture and threatening to pull out of NAFTA, Flinchbaugh, who is not known for a generous grading curve, gives Trump an F on trade policy.

Ag exports declined in 2017 and uncertainty, especially surrounding NAFTA, is likely to push markets even lower.

“NAFTA has created good jobs in this country,” Flinchbaugh said. “It works for the U.S., for Mexico and for Canada. The U.S., sells more corn, beef, pork and soy to Mexico and Canada than to anyone. If we pull the plug on NAFTA, we lose those markets to Brazil, Argentina and Europe. We simply cannot let that happen.”

Following his attendance at the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, Trump tweeted about maybe “rethinking” TPP, something that is probably too late for the U.S., considering other countries have moved ahead on finalizing the agreement without the U.S.

“TPP was probably the most lucrative bill for farmers in my lifetime,” Flinchbaugh said. “It put the U.S. in a strong, countervailing position of power to China. It put two powers in the region instead of one bully. Rejecting it played right into China’s hands. We have to get across the point that multi-lateral agreements are far superior to bi-lateral agreements for farmers.”

Finally, he said, farmers and their allies must make the administration understand that U.S. farmers absolutely must export 25% of their production.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “the question is, if you don’t have exports, you need to cut ag by 25%. Which 25% do you want to put out of business?”

Agriculture needs a legal, permanent, immigrant workforce

Not a lot of American workers want to pick tomatoes, thin lettuce, harvest fruit, milk cows or process beef and chicken.

Thousands of those jobs are filled by immigrant workers, many of them without legal status for living or working in the U.S.

“Almost 75% of our fruits and vegetables are picked by illegal immigrant workers,” Flinchbaugh told attendees. “About 50% of the milking of dairy cows is done by illegals. We don’t have any idea how many of our feedlot or meat processing workers are illegal.”

When it comes to immigration policy, these realities need to be taken into consideration, Flinchbaugh said.

“You get all this talk about H2A workers, but we don’t need seasonal workers. Cows have to be milked 365 days a year. We need permanent workers.”

The reality of the last several years has been that net migration is going south, wages are going up and labor shortages are becoming common, Flinchbaugh said.

So after all this bluster.. We have Tariffs in place.. which means that China now imports US Soybeans Via Brazil.. at about the same costs.. the only difference is that US Farmers lose out on about $2 per bushel..  All told US Farmers have lost over $13 billion thus far and we're only on Day 1.

( http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-markets/201807026470/soybeans-tumble-near-10-year-low.aspx  )

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Ohio State University estimate that Chinese tariffs of 25% on U.S. soybean imports would cut income for a midsize Illinois grain farm by an average of 87% over four years, prompting a loss of more than $500,000 in the farm’s net worth by 2021.

Trumps Trade Policy is a Failure.

Flinchbaugh was correct.