Mexico ready to retaliate by hurting American corn farmers

[herding cats]

Source: CNN

Mexico is one of the top buyers of American corn in the world today. And Mexican senator Armando Rios Piter, who leads a congressional committee on foreign relations, says he will introduce a bill this week where Mexico will buy corn from Brazil and Argentina instead of the United States.

It's one of the first signs of potential concrete action from Mexico in response to President Trump's threats against the country.

"I'm going to send a bill for the corn that we are buying in the Midwest and...change to Brazil or Argentina," Rios Piter, 43, told told CNN's Leyla Santiago on Sunday at an anti-Trump protest in Mexico City.

He added: It's a "good way to tell them that this hostile relationship has consequences, hope that it changes."

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/13/news/economy/mexico-trump-us-corn/index.html

[exboyfil]

1. I work for a large agricultural equipment manufacturer

My aisle of engineers just had to vote against "Hildebeast" (their word). I told them this was coming.

[Major Nikon]

2. $2.3 billion in corn exports to Mexico

https://www.fas.usda.gov/regions/mexico

[greymattermom]

14. Mexico is number 3

in agriculture export markets. It's a lot more than corn. Wheat too?

[OnDoutside]

3. Enjoy breaking this news to them....

[EarthFirst]

4. I live in a village just beyond the suburbs in a farming community...

After listening to the babble, and holding myself from coming unglued; during the campaign at the breakfast diner in town; may they rightly accept what they've got coming to them!

[DK504]

11. Elections have consequences.

Maybe now they will see what happens when they vote for an unstable sociopath.

[Achilleaze]

25. The industrial ag farmers are going to lose their workers, too

So by voting republican, they have voted to totally trash their businesses.

sad.

[Hoyt]

52. Maybe those are the jobs he has in mind for coal miners or something.

[hatrack]

55. Oh, they'll survive on endless mugs of "liberal tears", right?

.

[Girard442]

5. We need a strategy like this closer to home.

It's time the public and private sectors in the blue states work toward redirecting their spending away from red states and toward other blue states.

Those m*****f*****s voted for nothing less than our destruction. They should get nothing from us.

[Tikki]

22. Excellent idea.

I am already doing this on a personal scale...

No matter how you buy, you can find distribution origin.

I buy only from Blue States, to the best of my ability.

It is working so far.

Also, write companies, institutions and sporting, both domestic and international, and encourage them to
hold events at Blue State venues.

Site the Red State discrimination and laws.


Tikki

[Crash2Parties]

28. California does so based on state laws that weigh "religious liberty" over anti-discrimination laws.

[Crowman2009]

6. If the Trump loving farmers think this is bad, just wait until the migrant workers either...

....don't show up or aren't let in due to Drumpfy Dumpy's immigration policies.

[Hortensis]

38. Yes. Anti-Trump demonstrations in 18 Mexican cities

yesterday. Some will be choosing not to return as in normal years.

[Blue Idaho]

47. No kidding...

Then they sit and watch their crops rot in the fields because their labor force is a no show.

[Dawson Leery]

7. Excellente!

Those right wing agrarian types are going to learn about the free market now.

They are going to learn that their vote matters. If they go under, ADM or some billionaire can buy them out.

[Achilleaze]

27. The republicans are not "agrarian" types

they are "industrial ag" types, which means they are into chemicals, synthetic GMOs, synthetic hormones and all that kind of crap that dulls the body and the brain - obviously.

[Jose Garcia]

8. Why aren't they already buying corn from Brazil or Argentina instead of the US?

[Dawson Leery]

9. I want to but Brazilian corn too.

[randome]

15. I can only guess it might be more expensive?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[Javaman]

17. I have a feeling Brazil will now cut them a deal. nt

[randome]

18. That would be good business -something of which Dolt45 is ignorant.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[Javaman]

21. Dolt45!!! LOL!! nt

[randome]

23. Invented by someone else on DU last week. I'm taking Bernice King's advice to avoid using the name.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141694440
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[Jose Garcia]

30. Perhaps Mexico should spend the money to create jobs so that its citizens don't have to emigrate.

Last edited Tue Feb 14, 2017, 03:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Assuming that they have extra money sitting around.

[NWCorona]

39. Brazil is importing corn from us as their production per acre continues to fall.

[Jose Garcia]

42. So, Brazil would sell corn to Mexico which it bought from the US?

That makes sense.

[NWCorona]

45. I didn't say that but it actually might happen.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Overdue and well-deserved in any case

considering the way that dumping of heavily-subsidised US-grown corn on the Mexican market decimated Mexican farming.

[Dawson Leery]

20. Any farmer or agro-business that takes a subsidy is in effect

causing the murder of those in the developing world.

[Hortensis]

26. How about what ethanol did? Reminds me of something

I read about how Koch brothers had changed from opposing ethanol and subsidies to buying up ethanol plants and having their pocket politicians help secure government subsidies for them. If corn from Mexico goes down, will the price of ethanol go up?

[Crash2Parties]

29. Ethanol is an excellent symbol of their way of doing things.

-Requires huge corporate entitlements
-Adds more greenhouse gases
-Contains less energy
-Consumes drinking water
-Consumes crop land

[Hortensis]

33. All correlations to the backwardness of this administration

and the people so far managing to keep it headed in generally the "right" direction.

[former9thward]

49. Do you think ethanol was invented by this administration?

It has been the policy, (terrible), of Democratic and Republican administrations for decades.

[Hortensis]

53. No, I don't, Former. Why do you ask? But see graph inside.

Btw, we should remember that PRIVATE INDUSTRY PRODUCES ETHANOL. Government policies were pushed into being by industry to help boost profits.

In 2005, the GOP-controlled Congress and W in the White House passed the law requiring CORN-BASED ethanol be used to fulfill prior environmental requirements for gasoline.

Free market ideology at, if not its finest, certainly working as expected under these people.

[former9thward]

54. The ethanol mandate is the exact opposite of free market ideology.

Government is using its power to protect an industry based in the corn producing states. No one seems to want to take them on.

[Hortensis]

56. Yes to the first, no to the last. There are a lot of

people who "want to take them on," in and out of government. It's about power, who has it, and we haven't been empowering the right people.

I think now and then about all those people who sat out the election, or worse, because they imagined there wasn't much difference between the parties. We know the numbers were huge across the nation. Development of a wimpy, facile cynicism is a major tool used by the right to encourage people to just give up without even voting.

[Yavin4]

12. Didn't Iowa vote for Trump?

We live in an inter-connected global economy, and we cannot go back.

[SharonClark]

37. Yes, they control every thing now and are going full-Koch

The State Capitol has become a crazy place.

[catsudon]

13. i always prefer sugar over hfcs

so mexico should stick with what works , coke with real sugar.

[randome]

16. When you say 'coke'...

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[hollowdweller]

19. In a lot of ways free trade has screwed the US worker

I didn't vote for Trump, but this has really been true around where I live.

Most of the ones here though left in the Reagan admin.

HOWEVER the one area where free trade has really helped is farmers. Remember when Farm Aid started? Remember how many US farmers were in trouble???

Of course flooding central america w/cheap US factory farm produced goods sent their farmers to the US to be indentured servants on US farms. Just like the slaves who worked US farms in the 1800's they are looked down on.

But when Trump was running I was thinking about farmers, and how free trade had really saved their asses, along with illegal farm labor.

I was thinking how because of the fact a lot of them are not the sort of folks to think things thru, they would vote for Trump and suddenly they would have to realize they should have weighed whatever environmental relief they might have needed vs losing their labor force and market.

I think this is sort of a weird thing all businesses do. They tend to vote republican but the economy actually seems to do better under democrats.

[Hortensis]

31. :) Our current Republican president has himself

pointed out that the economy does do better under Democrats. Not recently, of course, but a quick glance at graphs over the past century shows a clear pattern.

[muntrv]

35. Artificially cheap US factory farm produced goods

since US factory farms take federal subsidies.

[a la izquierda]

24. Or...shocking I know...they could grow it themselves...

like Mexicans have been doing for like 5000 years.

[LanternWaste]

32. Mexico does grow corn.

Mexico does grow corn (app. 35m tonnes annually). However, when the US practices corn dumping, offering prices 15-20% under market value, it becomes less simplistic than... much as the world has been doing for 5000 years.

[a la izquierda]

34. Yes I know.

I live in Mexico in the summers.

[hollowdweller]

36. Well ask the migrants when they are going to strike for a season

to protest Trumps immigration moves.

That might get he farmers attention.

[a la izquierda]

46. What?

Have you not seen the Day without a Mexican protests popping up all over the country? That's a start.

It's real easy to say migrants should strike for a season when we're sitting here with jobs and homes. They strike, they lose their jobs. All that they have worked and sacrificed is flushed down the toilet. Oh, and right..then their families starve.

[Blue Idaho]

48. You don't strike for a season, you strike at harvest time.

Ask Caesar Chavez why striking is an important tool for poverty stricken farm workers.

[hollowdweller]

51. Sorry, what I meant. Harvest season.

[hollowdweller]

50. No I have no seen that. Thanks for telling me.

[Blue Idaho]

57. No problem!

Chavez understood that exploited farm workers would always get the short end of the stick unless they unionized. No better time to drag farm owners to the table than harvest season. Sadly, America is in the Union busting business these days. Conservatives know that if they take away the Unions they can step on the necks of workers and keep the money that would feed their kids in their own damn pockets.

[NWCorona]

40. Unfortunately this won't go anywhere.

Brazil has had it's corn production totals cut again due to a drought. Something like -10% over 2015. They are actually importing corn from the US.

Argentina would offer the most hope but the costs are substantially more. Especially when transportation costs are factored in. There is also an issue winding it's way through the court system, per Monsanto, where soy and corn farmers will pay more taxes and royalties for the use of the seeds.

The real sticking point tho is China. The State owned COFCO is heavily invested in both Brazil and Argentina grain export markets. China is funding a $200m upgrade to a port in Argentina as well as building highways in both countries.

If Mexico really wanted to stick it to us they would go after the wheat imports. That would be huge.

[Dawson Leery]

58. Then they must go after wheat.

Hit "God's Country" and hit them hard.

[TexasBushwhacker]

41. Subsidies for corn that is to be exported makes ZERO sense! N/t

[Kimchijeon]

43. Will be interesting to see the result of this

[Adrahil]

44. The corn farmers in my district voted at leaat 70% for Trump.

It's perhaps time they learn that being a bully comes at a price.

OTO,k it probably means the prices for domestic corn would plummet.