Quote:
Originally Posted by sware2cod
The financial aid to farmers due to tariffs is not enough money to make up for the farmers' losses related to tariffs. Maybe it covers 1/3 of their losses for some farmers. Although other farmers get no aid. In addition, the farm subsidies are coming from the federal budget and this is digging the USA deeper into debt. It's not sustainable and it's a failure to the farmers as well as the taxpayers. The farmers dont' want subsidies - they want the tariffs removed.
The small subsidies are not enough money for the farmers to automate or even for them to buy a new tractor. The tariffs are terrible for farmers as well as for many companies in the USA. They won't have money to automate if they are impacted by the tariffs. Instead, some companies will go under, some will layoff, some will move production to other countries(even after subsidies).
Smaller farms and businesses will take massive losses for the year and some farmers will be forced to sell off land rather than lose the entire farm. There's no end in sight as far as a solution to the tariffs unless Democrats take control. Then there's hope that they can get enough Republicans to vote to get rid of the tariffs.
As soon as Trump leaves office, the next president (even Pence) will remove the tariffs. Tariffs are a failure, just like Trump. And Ted Cruz supports the failed Trump policies too. Cruz is bad for TX. Cruz is bad for America.
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Yup. The farmers who hollered the loudest got some breaks in subsidies. The farmers who didn't yell as loud got no subsidies.
None of the subsidies are high enough to match the pre-tariff crop prices the farmers were getting on the global open market.
Modern farms all use and use up a lot of manufactured products that are going to be hit the hardest by the tariffs. This includes the entire implement industry, all the companies who manufacture grain drills, disc plows, tillers, rakes, soil conditioners, weeders, and other equipment, and they are all completely dependent on the farmers, who are the only buyers for their products.
Tractors, trailers, trucks, etc. are obvious, but they're not the companies that may be hurt the worst. Most farmers can hold off buying a new tractor for years with good maintenance. It's the smaller equipment that will really get hit.
Most of these companies are relatively small, and are located in small towns in the mid-west. They are usually the only industry a town has. A company like Hesston, a leader in hay equipment, sells a lot more new balers every year than a tractor maker like John Deere. Hay balers take a beating, and simply don't last as long as a tractor.
And since they don't cost as much, farmers replace them more frequently. Dozens of implements are like that, and they are all a lot of job providers.
The tariffs will also hit the seed grain business very hard, along with the small parts companies that make spray equipment, irrigation systems, pumps, control panels, and even GPS systems, drones, and specialized computer software.
The worst thing about tariffs is the ripple effect. These days, a company that has no direct line to agriculture can suddenly find they can't sell any of their products because the farmers can't afford to buy them. Every piece of equipment on a farm has something that is outsourced in it. None of them make everything that goes into their products in-house.
Worse, the tariffs will cause American farmers to lag behind the cutting edge of ag technology. The world's farmers are all as industrialized as we are now, and they are all investing heavily in tech that will increase crop yield using less energy, less water, fewer chemicals, and less labor.
Some of those developments are quite radical and require huge initial investments from the farmers. But they also come with a lot of radical support, which can make the investment pay off very quickly.
Manufacturers and farmers work hand-in-hand out of necessity; each helps the other to thrive in a very symbiotic relationship.
If our farmers lose that edge, we could be in serious trouble for a very long time to come. Catch-up is really hard if a farmer is using nothing but obsolescent technology.
Tariffs once worked when all farmers everywhere were raising crops all around the planet in much the same ways using much the same machinery. Those days ended decades ago, and are never coming back.
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