You are subsidizing Bessent and Caputo’s hedge funds friends.
Unless you’re a dictator who has his whole life to make any necessary changes, generally a politician has a fairly short window to try and make change, due to term limits, the fickle support of the general public, and who all they elect into office with you.
The right answer is to make slow, gradual changes that move things back in the right direction - even if that will easily in an underwhelming response by the electorate. The problem is that the sort of person who would want to do it that way is also the sort of person who generally can’t get elected by a popular vote among the people.
Any populist leader - left or right - is generally going to be fairly poor.
I also helps if you understand politics and the necessary compromises it implies, something that both shit-persons have trouble with.
From the linked Newsweek article:
"We would buy some beef from Argentina,” Trump told reporters
The US government itself is going to purchase (and distribute) beef? Or rather facilitate commercial US meat packers to source/import? Any chance some shipments of Brazillian beef “slips through” the protocols for expedience?
largely because screwworm outbreaks have weakened already diminished (US) cattle herds.
Now if a country was considering allowing the importing of US beef, you probably won’t introduce screwworm [an example that if an omnipotent God created all life for their divine purpose, he is a sick & evil motherfucker] from chilled processed beef carcasses alone, rather than from live cattle, hides and other offal, but why would you take the risk? No US meat processor is going to guarantee their product against that risk.
Then you get the full agro-socialist playbook of protectionism from the very same guys whose corporate economic model is SovCit independence plus regular Federal pay checks.
"high prices are “the fault of politicians who have allowed BRICS-aligned entities to dominate the meat industry, that participate in price fixing…”
So BRICS etc are conspiring to artificially inflate prices for beef for the US consumer? Whilst at very same time.
" … allowing these (BRICS-aligned) entities to flood the market with cheaper, lower-quality imports."
All the while watching the demographics of their customer base desert them in terms of supply, price and preference. Whither “Where’s the beef?”.
beyond discouraging shoppers from purchasing beef, rising prices have strengthened the case for plant-based proteins. Some 58 percent of those polled said that beef’s current costs were an either somewhat or very convincing reason to choose a nonmeat alternative, rising to 60 percent among Gen Zers surveyed.
Making some sort of business case that without an export market for US soyabeans, in the spirit of rampant nationalism, the US government should acquire the entire crop and use TVP to keep the price of US beef affordable. Tofu to feed the way to MAGA.
Why did you insert “US” into that quote? Screwworms are not affecting US cattle.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/cattle/ticks/screwworm
On August 1, CDC notified USDA of a case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in a traveler returning from Central America. There have been no detections in U.S. livestock , and the risk to domestic animals and wildlife remains low . There is no evidence of further exposure beyond this individual case.
Further, on Wikipedia:
Clearly, the article is talking about herds in South America being diminished, not the US.
The exact quote from Newslink is:
The price of beef, alongside other everyday essentials, has soared this year largely because screwworm outbreaks have weakened already diminished cattle herds.
The price rises referred to are US.
The diminished herds referred to are US.
The driving cause referenced is ambiguous.
Concur that the northward advance of screwworm has been held in check for some time by an extensive baiting program in Central America by the US.
But on 25th July:
And on Oct 20th:
Per your own CBS source:
A flesh-eating parasite that once ravaged Texas livestock is creeping back—and the state is stepping in to stop it.
I don’t know how it’s reducing American herds when it has been eradicated in the US, and efforts are being made to keep it from coming back. The cause is not from screwworm outbreaks, because they are not occurring in the US. The source you initially misquoted was saying that screwworm outbreaks are responsible for scarcity of beef in general, driving up the price due to scarcity. This being the SDMB, I felt obligated to push back against misinformation.
Granted, US herd sizes are reduced. That is true. This is from early last year:
Note that while that data is from early 2024, that is because reports on cattle size are reported semi-anually by the USDA, so a new report won’t be until 2026.
The USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) provides information on cattle inventory in its semi-annual Cattle reports.
The reason presented for the small herd size is attributed to higher input costs (things like feed for the cattle) which I assume is due to inflation and lingering supply chain disruptions from the pandemic, and climate change causing a drought. Per the Farm Bureau article:
With drought and high input costs compelling farmers to market a higher-than-normal percentage of female cattle, the most recent cattle inventory dropped to lows not seen in decades.
Screwworm is not a part of the reduction in US herd sizes, though again I’m sure it’s affecting the total herd size in the Americas, which drives up prices.
I think we’re starting to see some results from Trump’s economic efforts.
If you click the third image at this link to bring up the “Percent of Balance 90+ Days Delinquent” chart:
We’re seeing Credit Card, Auto, Student Loan, and “Other” types of loans are now at similar levels to the 2009 mortgage crisis. (Mortgage and home equity credit both appear to be at lows.)
Housing debt - per the first chart that was initially shown on the page - is the majority of debt (roughly $13.5t versus $5t for non-housing) and, as just said, mortgage/home equity delinquencies are at record lows, so the likely impact of a crisis would be smaller than in 2009. Still, it’s showing that households are starting to struggle with their finances at a pretty high rate.
Likewise, we’re starting to see Trump’s approval rating drop - though that could be due to the shutdown, airport outages, SNAP credit losses, etc.
In general, the government responses would be to 1) lower the Fed rate, and 2) hire blue collar workers into government jobs, breaking windows. The latter was already pre-arranged via the Big Beautiful Bill, setting up the government as a competitor for low-education labor against manufacturers who might want to re-shore back to the US. Of course, government jobs would either be temporary or, worse, unionized and difficult to roll back, shafting us with a glut of professional window breakers and driving up the yield of treasury bonds as the US government outspends revenue trying to support all those workers.
Trump is going to go down as the worst president for jobs, by a couple of country miles.
His first term ended with a massive surge in unemployment; now, that was due to Covid, but it doesn’t change the statistics.
As for his second term?
(Note that the Wall Street Journal is citing a private company because the U.S. isn’t providing labor statistics. It’s such a complete shit show)
Pretty sure he’s got a ways to go before he hits Hoover-esque numbers
Probably accurate, but Trump is actively and continually trying to actually fire people himself, as if he set a goal to try to beat Hoover.
Since Trump is both the 45th and 47th President, he going for being the worst two presidents.
The only reason that unemployment isn’t skyrocketing is that immigration has essentially been shut off. That means US companies aren’t getting the actual talent they need to grow. And the stock market is a smokescreen, which is apparent when you strip out the Mag 7 companies. And those 7 are mostly just selling to each other, and investing their capital into AI. The S&P493 growth is actually feeble. And even those are still the largest companies in the US. Smaller public and private companies are suffering. The economy is a house of cards and not sustainable.
The biggest hazard in the American (and really, world) economy right now. Investment that does not actually produce but is just a doubled down bet.
The ADP jobs report is also showing that employment numbers plateaued at the start of the year and haven’t budged. Usually, the number grows with the population count.
The previous extended plateau was in the months leading up to the pandemic unemployment spike:
We continue to see the impact of Trump’s economy. He’s paying farmers to try to make up for the markets he destroyed.
We’ve been here before.
He can probably count on his Base “not remembering” that this happened in his first term, too (whether via willful ignoring of facts, or actual absent-mindedness).
Meanwhile China is making out just FINE:
The farmers won’t see this as welfare, and will support him with the same misled vigor that they always have for Republicans.
Just like when farmers lost workers because of fear of ICE, they didn’t blame Trump for persecuting migrants, but rather they blamed Democrats for scaring people.
There’s a youtube channel called Farm to Taber by a woman who is a farmer, and a Democrat. Her explanation as to why farmers voted for Trump is that it’s easier to cash a check than to actually grow things, and the immigration crackdown is helping to keep farm wages low.
