4A
FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2020
The Observer
OUR VIEW
Time for
some details
about pact
President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign
phase one of a U.S.-China trade deal on Wednesday
at the White House.
After announcing the deal the president told farm-
ers that they’d need to buy bigger tractors because
they will be selling so much to China.
But in the month since the deal was announced,
no written agreement has been produced and the
Chinese have not confi rmed or denied the terms
released by the White House. That has led to a great
deal of justifi ed skepticism that the agreement could
be as rich as advertised.
Under the deal the U.S. agreed to suspend a new
round of tariff hikes on $160 billion worth of Chinese
goods that were to go into effect Dec. 15, and to re-
duce tariffs on $112 billion in goods that are already
in place. China agreed to buy $40 billion — and per-
haps as much as $50 billion — worth of agricultural
goods from the U.S. a year for the next two years.
The Chinese also agreed to reduce barriers to beef,
poultry and animal feed, and to increase protections
for intellectual property.
China’s commitment to $40 billion in ag purchases
is extremely ambitious, given its purchases have
never come close to that amount. In 2013-14 it hit a
record of just under $26 billion a year. Skeptics point
out that in 2013 commodity prices were much higher
than they are today, making it easier to hit even that
mark. The Wall Street Journal reported that soybean
future prices were about 40% higher in 2013 and
wheat and corn futures were about double what they
are today.
“History has never been even close to that level,”
Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State
University, told The Associated Press. “There’s no
clear path to get us there in one year.”
Other analysts say that China could easily step
up its purchases of American pork. Its domestic pork
production has been severely reduced because of
an outbreak of African swine fever. China buys $40
billion in soybeans on the world market each year.
As much as a third of that has been supplied by the
U.S., leaving room for additional sales if supplies
exist.
“The purchases should be based on market prin-
ciples,” Tu Xinquan, director of the China Institute
for WTO Studies in Beijing, told The Associated
Press. “The United States should compete with other
countries through price and quality.”
So, the exact terms of the agreement seem
ambiguous and open to interpretation.
Farmers will be thrilled if the actual purchases
come even close to what’s been promised by the
administration. And so will tractor dealers if bigger
machines are needed. But it’s time for the White
House to provide a text that states in clear language
exactly how much the Chinese will be buying.
MY VOICE
Taking action to restore trust in
government, political process
I
n Union County, being a cyclist is
dangerous. Cyclists may refuse to
yield to one another, to vehicles and
cutting people off at will at crossings —
because they don’t trust others to give
them their turn.
This is just one symptom of a prob-
lem that is diffi cult to diagnose: a lack
of confi dence in government regulations
promulgated or honesty of politicians
are others.
Many speculate that dwindling trust
in government is to blame for seismic
shifts in politics — namely the U.S. In
the wake of the 2008 fi nancial crisis,
low-income and middle-class Americans
found themselves saddled with debt and
dealing with lost jobs, homes, and sav-
ings. They started to see government as
dishonest, corrupt and there to serve the
few, not the many. Little has changed in
over a decade and certainly not in the
halls of Congress or in Washington as
mounting criminal activities and ethics
violations are reported as the norm.
But losing confi dence in government
isn’t just about how people vote or view
politicians — it also affects the way we
and they interact with each other.
What happens when citizens don’t
trust their government?
Losing faith in political institutions
is tantamount to losing social capital —
the idea that citizens agree on the rules
of a society and why they matter.
If people think their elected offi cials
aren’t playing by the same rules, they
come up with ways to game the system.
When this every-person-for-themselves
attitude prevails, the rules of society
start to erode. And, when citizens view
their government as corrupt, they are
more likely to cut corners, too.
Some have said that to live in Ameri-
ca is to live in a society of distrust — to
the point where some would not stop to
help an elderly person who has fallen in
the street, for fear of being blamed for
pushing them. From poor manners to a
About the author
Write to us
Randy L Knop, is the vice-chair of
the Union County
Democratic Central
Committee.
My Voice columns
should be 500-700
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disregard for others’ physical safety, it’s
easy to see the problem: When people
do not trust others to uphold society’s
norms, they don’t do so themselves.
Mistrust impacts everything, from
policy effectiveness to accountability
to regulation. Nothing and no one are
exempt.
Figuring out whom to trust in the
United States is harder than ever. For
the fi rst time in recent history, the
divide among Americans isn’t as simple
as Democrat versus Republican but a
chasm between what people believe to
be true. When the president calls into
question the morality and authority
of the media — whose very job it is to
serve as a government watchdog — it
can be diffi cult for citizens to know who
to trust or what to believe.
How then can government gain
citizens’ trust?
It’s diffi cult to measure exactly how
governments gain citizens’ trust — but
here are some innovative ways to begin
rebuilding trust.
• Transparent policymaking: Govern-
ments today should do more than pro-
vide raw data on public services. They
must present information in simple,
easily digestible ways to show citizens
what their tax dollars and public of-
fi cials are doing.
• Readily available data: Trust is
making data — all data, on everything
from pothole repairs to emergency
response times — open and accessible to
the public. And every elected offi cial’s fi -
nancial ties to lobbyists and big corpora-
tions must be a matter of public record.
• Involve citizens in policy: Put power
in the hands of people — big decisions
via referendum in using a form of “citi-
zen jury,” which enlists a random selec-
tion of citizens to consult on a big policy
decision. The citizen jury dissects issues
in the same way a jury in a courtroom
does — by looking at verifi ed facts and
fi gures and hearing evidence from a
range of experts and witnesses.
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