meta Ron Johnson says Donald Trump is wrong about struggling Wisconsin dairy farmers being ‘over the hump’ :: The Bullvine - The Dairy Information You Want To Know When You Need It

Ron Johnson says Donald Trump is wrong about struggling Wisconsin dairy farmers being ‘over the hump’


Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson on Friday disputed President Donald Trump’s conclusion that farmers struggling to stay in business were instead “over the hump” and doing well.

“No. They’re suffering,” Johnson said surrounded by dairy farmers in the conference room of a DeForest company that sells frozen bovine semen for artificial insemination of dairy cows. 

Trump raised $3 million this month touring Milwaukee to promote a new trade deal he says will help rebuild the country’s wounded manufacturing and agriculture industry.   

But in doing so, the president downplayed the suffocation felt by Wisconsin dairy farmers because of Trump’s own tariffs.

“Prices were depressed before the trade wars; the trade wars are not helping that whatsoever,” Johnson said on Friday. “I’m making the administration well aware of the pain being felt in Wisconsin agriculture but also in Wisconsin manufacturing.”

Johnson met with about a dozen dairy producers to discuss the proposed trade agreement with Canada and Mexico — which all said needed to be in place immediately.

Wisconsin dairy farms have been teetering on the edge of a financial cliff since milk prices dropped dramatically five years ago amid overproduction and failing export markets.

“I have no idea why the administration didn’t ratify this while we still had control of the House,” Johnson said. “I have no idea. We were pressuring him.”

In Wisconsin, nearly 700 dairy farms shuttered in 2018 at a rate of nearly two a day. As of Feb. 1, Wisconsin had 8,046 dairy herds, down 40% from 10 years earlier, according to state Department of Agriculture data. 

“Things were starting to look up a little bit and then all of a sudden there was talk of tariffs coming along and that just took the prices back down,” said Chris Pollack, a fifth-generation farmer who owns 160 dairy cows at Pollack-Vu Dairy farm near Ripon.

“Just a dollar swing in milk price for my farm is $45,000 a year,” he said. “That’s $45,000 that I could have reinvested in equipment or other supplies.”

Pollack said he put off a grain storage project for two or three years waiting for prices to go back up, but finally just decided to get it done for the sake of his own mental health.

“This year I finally said we’re going to do it — I don’t care,” he said. “When you can’t feel like you’re making progress at least at some point or you’re actually going backward, it really is hard to get up in the morning.”

The U.S. reached a deal with Canada and Mexico in 2018 to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement, with Canada agreeing to provide the U.S. with expanded access to its dairy market and Mexico agreeing to zero tariffs on dairy and agricultural products. Mexico also agreed to not restrict market access for commonly named U.S. cheeses.

Mexico buys nearly a quarter of all dairy products exported by the U.S. and the American dairy industry has reeled from Mexican tariffs — of 15% to 25% — on cheese.

Canada and Mexico are Wisconsin’s two biggest export customers, with a combined $10.5 billion in products in 2018 including cheese, powdered milk, corn and soybeans.

All three countries’ lawmakers need to agree to ratify the deal and so far, just Mexico has approved their version of the bill. 

Johnson was cool to the trade deal — saying he wasn’t there to “overhype” its impact but said it’s needed. He said it could help dairy farmers especially by opening Mexico’s market to them.

He blamed the delay in ratification on the Democratic-controlled House and told the dairy producers to talk to U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan, Ron Kind, Gwen Moore and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. 

But Kind said the deal needs to be strengthened to ensure it can be enforced.

“Senator Johnson may not care whether the new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada is enforceable, but I do,” he said. “We need to strengthen the enforcement chapter or the agreement will be meaningless.”

A spokesman for Pocan did not immediately respond to questions. In a statement, Baldwin said it’s up to the White House to advance the legislation to ratify the agreement.

“The White House first needs to send the legislation implementing the agreement to Congress,” Baldwin said. “Wisconsin has lost over 1,600 dairy farms since President Trump took office and his trade wars have not helped our farmers. We need make sure final legislation expands markets for Wisconsin cheese exports in Mexico and addresses Canada’s unfair trade barriers for Wisconsin dairy.” 

Trump’s top economic adviser Lawrence Kudlow told White House reporters Friday he hopes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will take up the bill in September, according to a Wall Street Journal report. 

Pelosi is seeking changes to boost enforcement the new labor rules Mexico is required to adopt under the new trade deal as a way to protect workers’ rights, among other measures.

John Ruedinger, a dairy farmer in Fond du Lac County, said he didn’t understand why lawmakers couldn’t come to an agreement by now.

“In my mind I just can’t understand — why wouldn’t both Democrats and Republicans come together on trying to solve it,” Ruedinger said. “I just don’t understand it.” 

Source: Journal Sentinel


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