Day: December 3, 2019

American Farmers Are in Crisis. Here’s Why

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Smaller farms have found it especially hard to adapt to these changes, which they blame on government policy and a lack of antitrust enforcement. The government is on the side of big farms, they say, and is ambivalent about whether small farms can succeed. “Get big or get out,” Earl Butz, Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, infamously told farmers in the 1970s. It’s a sentiment that Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary under President Trump, echoed recently. “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out,” Perdue said, at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. The number of farms with more than 2,000 acres nearly doubled between 1987 and 2012, according to USDA data. The number of farms with 200 to 999 acres fell over that time period by 44 percent.
— Read on time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/

Dow drops 400 points after Trump says he could wait on China deal

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

U.S. equities slid on Tuesday after President Donald Trump suggested he may want to delay a trade deal with China until after the 2020 presidential election.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 400 points shortly after the opening bell, led lower by trade-vulnerable Apple, Caterpillar and 3M. The S&P 500 slid 1.2% amid losses in chip stocks like Nvidia, Micron and Advanced Micro Devices. The Nasdaq Composite also lost 1.3%.

Markets hit their lows of their day after Fox News reported that the White House still plans on moving ahead with scheduled Dec. 15 tariffs on Chinese goods notwithstanding recent efforts at a “phase one” trade truce.

— Read on www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/12/03/stock-market-wall-street-in-focus-amid-south-america-trade-tariffs.html