Subject: Oh Soy Can You See
Great article in the NYT about soy farmers in North Dakota. Gifted link below. A short read.

The story contains all the hallmarks of policies in the Trump autocracy; being outsmarted by our adversaries, conflict of interests, the cost of billions to American taxpayers, the weakening of American interests, and of course, the secret Trump ingredients that brings it all it all together, incompetence, incoherence, ineptitude, and outright stupidity.

And where are the Chinese getting soy beans from? Of course, Brazil.

The world’s economic web is a vast 3-D chessboard and Trump is playing tic-tac-toe on scraps of paper.

A few random clips from the gifted article:

For the first time in the history of their 76-year-old operation, their biggest customer — China — had stopped buying soybeans. Their 2,300-acre soybean farm is projected to lose $400,000 in 2025.

That decision has had devastating repercussions for farmers in North Dakota, which exported more than 70 percent of its soybeans to China before Trump unveiled the new tariffs this year.

Those talks are being anchored by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Mr. Trump has put in charge of negotiating and securing a favorable trade deal with China. A win would undoubtedly curry favor with Mr. Trump. But in a strange twist, it could also help Mr. Bessent financially.

The Treasury Secretary owns thousands of acres of North Dakota farmland, worth up to $25 million.

To farmers in North Dakota, the forces of high interest rates, high input costs and falling prices are reminiscent of the 1980s farm crisis, which hobbled U.S. agriculture for nearly a decade and hollowed out much of rural America.

The attention from the White House raised hopes among North Dakota farmers that a deal might be near. But no progress has been made. With soybean harvest season just weeks away, they warn that the situation is getting dire.

The role Mr. Bessent is playing poses a potential conflict of interest given that he owns thousands of acres of farmland in North Dakota.

Mr. Bessent was supposed to sell his farmland this year as part of a government ethics agreement that requires top officials to divest from assets if their federal work could directly influence the assets’ value.

The Office of Government Ethics said last month that Mr. Bessent failed to fully comply with an agreement that required him to divest his financial assets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0...