Jacob Bunge reports in the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s trade war is slowing overseas sales of US-produced meat, contributing to more than 2.5 billion pounds of red meat and poultry sitting in US warehouses waiting for buyers. Bunge writes:
Meat is often kept frozen in cold-storage facilities for months, though if it becomes unprofitable for meat companies to store, products can be sent to rendering plants to produce fats and pet-food ingredients.
Mmmmm! Good news for rendering plants, no? And in the short term this megaton of meat should be good for other US consumers too, as producers try to unload the meat here. Longer term, though, Bunge reports that some US producers are beginning to scale back. Vegetarians should suppress their cheers, though, as producers are thinking of producing in Eastern Europe or South America to escape the trade war. So although total world meat production will likely increase, effectively these changes will export jobs from the US. Ohio hog farmer Jim Heimerl, president of the National Pork Producers Council, recently said of US pork producers:
We now face large financial losses and contraction because of escalating trade disputes. That means less income for pork producers and, ultimately, some of them going out of business.
Oh, and one more thing. Bunge writes:
The USDA has examined drawing upon Depression-era programs that permit borrowing of as much as $30 billion from the Treasury as a way to compensate farmers for tariff-driven price declines
So, we’ll have taxpayer-funded welfare for farmers, to try to pacify them into not protesting the trade war’s economic fallout? And our children and grandchildren will be stuck with the bill for this? Hey, life’s great when you’re rich and other people are paying for your mistakes, right? Great work, Republicans!