...he surprises me and takes stupidity to a new low:
Soybeans Are Fungible
Quote:Soybeans Are Fungible
When politicians violate domestic laws, they may or may not get away with it. When they violate the laws of economics, economics always wins. Case in point: soybeans. Every soybean looks pretty much like every other soybean. You really can't tell them apart. As a result of the trade war that Donald Trump started with China and the Chinese retaliatory tariffs, U.S. soybean exports to China have dropped 98%.
Fortunately, U.S. soybean farmers are creative, so they started selling a large volume of soybeans to Brazil and Argentina. However, these countries also produce a large volume of soybeans themselves. So what are they doing with their domestic soybeans? Selling them to China, naturally. The net result is that China ends up with as many soybeans as it wants anyway, but U.S. farmers get less money because the South Americans can't pay as much as the Chinese for the beans. The moral of the story is that tariffs often don't achieve the goal they were intended to produce (in this case, to hurt China) but end up damaging the country that started the trade war in the first place. (V)
Soybeans Are Fungible
