Tag: U.S. economy
Farmers Don’t Need to Read the Science. We Are Living It.
A new report is another dire warning on climate change.
FIREBAUGH, CALIFORNIA — Many farmers probably haven’t read the new report from the United Nations warning of threats to the global food supply from climate change and land misuse. But we don’t need to read the science — we’re living it.
Here in the San Joaquin Valley, one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, there’s not much debate anymore that the climate is changing. The drought of recent years made it hard to ignore; we had limited surface water for irrigation, and the groundwater was so depleted that land sank right under our feet.
Temperatures in nearby Fresno rose to 100 degrees or above on 15 days last month, which was the hottest month worldwide on record, following the hottest June ever. (The previous July, temperatures reached at least 100 degrees on 26 consecutive days, surpassing the record of 22 days in 2005.) The heat is hard to ignore when you and your crew are trying to fix a broken tractor or harvest tomatoes under a blazing sun. As the world heats up, so do our soils, making it harder to get thirsty plants the water they need.
View the complete August 9 commentary by U.S. farmer Alan Sano on The New York Times website here.
Recession Warning in Bond Market Sharpens, Adding Pressure on Fed
A rush to safer investments has pushed government bond yields close to lows not seen since 2016, when a slowdown gripped the economy.
Wall Street has a message for the Federal Reserve: You are not done cutting rates.
Even as the central bank lowered borrowing costs last month, it tried to temper expectations that a string of additional moves were imminent. But in the financial markets, it is clear that investors expect more cuts to come.
In bond markets this week, yields on government debt have touched lows not seen since 2016, when a sharp slowdown in growth — and what many now view as a mini-recession — gripped the economy. The decline implies investors have substantially downgraded their expectations for the economy.
View the complete August 8 article by Matt Phillips on The New York Times website here.
Businesses, farmers brace for new phase in Trump trade war
U.S. businesses and farmers are begging President Trump for relief from his escalating trade war with China as tensions between the world’s two largest economies reach new heights.
Trump’s plan to impose a 10 percent tariff on more than $300 billion in Chinese goods, and China’s decision to suspend U.S. agricultural imports, sets the stage for potential economic and political blowback for the president.
Advocates for businesses and industries caught in the crosshairs of the yearlong U.S.-China trade war are bracing for damage, warning Trump’s new tariffs could force them to hike prices or lay off workers during this year’s holiday shopping season.
View the complete August 8 article by Sylvan Lane and Alex Gangitano on The Hill website here.
Analysts spooked as a key sign of a recession ‘blares loudest’ alarm since 2007
Economic analysts were spooked Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 800 points and other key stock indices plunged in the worst fall of 2019. The drop came amid the turmoil of President Donald Trump’s ramped-up trade war with China.
China’s currency dropped to the lowest point in a decade, the Associated Press reported, following Trump’s announcement last week that he would move forward with a new round of tariffs.
Bloomberg reported in a story headlined “Yield Curve Blares Loudest U.S. Recession Warning Since 2007″:
View the complete August 5 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.
As climate reckoning arrives over agriculture, USDA’s scientists face censorship
With this week’s IPCC report set to take a hard line on agriculture, USDA could see heightened scrutiny.
A government climate scientist who says the Trump administration buried a groundbreaking report he authored has left the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in protest over the “political views” top officials allegedly imposed on his work.
Politico reported Monday that Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist who worked at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) for more than 20 years, quit due to an increasingly political atmosphere at the agency. Ziska had worked on a major rice study last year, one that found rising levels of carbon dioxide could imperil the critical source of sustenance for some 600 million people globally. According to Ziska’s work, the mineral and protein content in rice, along with key vitamins, is expected to drop as greenhouse gas levels rise.
Agency scientists have accused department officials of seeking to bury that report, among others, in keeping with President Donald Trump’s stance denying and downplaying climate change. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has similarly dismissedglobal warming as “weather patterns.”
View the complete August 5 article by E.A. Crunden on the ThinkProgress website here.
Dow plummets on devaluation of China’s currency
U.S. stock markets plummeted on Monday following China’s move to devalue its currency, Beijing’s latest step in a tense faceoff on trade with President Trump.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 900 points, or 3.5 percent, in its worst one-day drop in 2019. The S&P 500 had fallen 107 points late in the trading session, or 3.7 percent.
If the Dow closes at that level, it would rank as the third-largest, single-day point drop in its history. The current top four all took place in 2018. In percentage terms, however, the plunge would not break the top 20.
View the complete August 5 article by Niv Elis on The Hill website here.
Treasury Dept. designates China a ‘currency manipulator,’ a major escalation of the trade war
The United States and China traded blows in an unrestrained economic conflict Monday that sent stock markets plunging and threatened to inflict significant damage on a weakening global economy.
Late in the day, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin formally labeled China a “currency manipulator,” a largely symbolic slap at Beijing that is likely to deepen the growing animosity between the two trading partners.
The move, which President Trump had promised to take on his first day in office, requires Treasury only to initiate consultations with China. Beijing has long denied U.S. accusations that it keeps its currency undervalued to make its products more competitive on world markets.
Fox News Host Neil Cavuto Tells Viewers Trump Is Wrong: ‘China Isn’t Paying These Tariffs. You Are.’
“Just to be clarifying, China isn’t paying these tariffs. You are,” Cavuto told his audience.
Immediately after President Donald Trump boasted to White House reporters that the United States rakes in billions of dollars from China because of his tariffs, Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto issued an on-air fact-check of the president’s remarks, directly telling his viewers that Trump is wrong.
While taking questions on the White House lawn Friday afternoon, the president insisted Americans farmers are fully behind his trade war and support his latest tariffs on $300 billion worth of goods from China.
“Remember this, our country is taking in billions and billions of dollars from China,” Trump exclaimed. “We never took in ten cents from China. Out of that many billions of dollars, we’re taking a part of it and giving it to the farmers because they’ve been targeted by China. The farmers, they come out totally whole.”
Right away, Cavuto cut away from the president’s impromptu press gaggle to point out that, once again, Trump was not telling the truth when it came to who pays for tariffs.
View the complete August 2 article by Justin Baragona on the Daily Beast website here.
‘Trumponomics has utterly failed’: Paul Krugman details why the GOP’s economic worldview has collapsed
It’s often taken for granted that, whatever else you might say about President Donald Trump, he has at least been good for the U.S. economy. That, many argue, is the fact that may lead to his re-election in 2020.
Except this uncritically accepted pearl of conventional wisdom is quite dubious, as many experts in economics would tell you.
One of those experts, Trump-appointed Fed Chair Jerome Powell, even announced a cut to interest rates this week in light of weak business investment in the economy and the uncertainty caused by the president’s trade wars.
Another expert is economist Paul Krugman, who wrote in a new piece for the New York Times Thursday: “Obviously Powell couldn’t say in so many words that Trumponomics has been a big flop, but that was the subtext of his remarks. And Trump’s frantic efforts to bully the Fed into bigger cuts are an implicit admission of the same thing.”
View the complete August 2 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.