Page 8A
BUSINESS
East Oregonian
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Economist: Wheat prices to remain low for at least three years
By MATTHEW WEAVER
EO Media Group
SPOKANE — Northwest
farmers aren’t likely to
see wheat prices rebound
substantially for the next
three to five years, an econo-
mist says.
Washington State Univer-
sity small grains economist
Randy Fortenbery and Glen
Squires, CEO of the Wash-
ington Grain Commission,
delivered a joint economic
forecast Wednesday at the
Spokane Ag Expo and Pacific
Northwest Farm Forum.
Record global wheat
production and “huge” world
stocks that are growing faster
than demand will continue to
depress commodity prices,
Fortenbery said.
“The real problem has
been not only have we done
well, most of our global
competitors have done
well also,” Fortenbery said.
“The real problem has been not only
have we done well, most of our global
competitors have done well also.”
— Randy Fortenbery, small grains economist
“Unfortunately,
without
some sort of a production
problem somewhere in this
coming crop year, that’s not
going to go away.”
If the situation continues,
low prices will lead to
stressed margins, impacting
land rental rates and farm
assets, Fortenbery said.
Wheat prices received
in Washington state are
generally a little higher than
U.S. average prices, Squires
said. The U.S. average price
is roughly $3.80 per bushel,
and the Washington average
is roughly $4.29 per bushel.
Because of low wheat
and corn prices, across the
U.S. more farmers will shift
into soybeans, whose price is
doing relatively well, Forten-
bery predicts.
Lower prices also mean
the U.S. Department of the
Treasury will pay more in
crop insurance claims than
anticipated, Fortenbery said.
“If you remember back
in 2014, a lot of the discus-
sion was, ‘This has to be a
budget-reducing farm bill,’”
Fortenbery said.
The industry will likely
push for increased flexibility
and a better safety net in the
next farm bill, but Fortenbery
said it isn’t likely to be a top
priority in Washington, D.C.
Commodity groups will
need to build strong coalitions
to get farm bill discussions on
lawmakers’ agendas, he said.
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Randy Fortenbery, Washington State University small grains economist, and Glen
Squires, CEO of the Washington Grain Commission, chat before speaking Feb. 8 at
the Spokane Ag Expo and Pacific Northwest Farm Forum.
Resort deal revamp tests Trump pledge on foreign projects
By JEFF HORWITZ
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — To
quiet concerns over foreign
influence, President Donald
Trump promised no new
international business deals
while in office. Instead,
Trump’s
business
is
returning to a very old one.
The Trump family’s re-en-
gagement in a Dominican
resort deal signed a decade
ago surfaced unexpectedly
last week, when Eric Trump,
an executive vice president,
was photographed touring
the property Feb. 2 with
developers Ricardo and
Fernando Hazoury.
In a press release, the
Hazoury brothers called
their relationship with Eric
Trump “incredibly strong.”
But the relationship has been
rocky: Eric Trump accused
the brothers of “textbook
fraud” in a 2012 lawsuit over
allegedly hidden property
sales.
A firm plan for further
Trump-licensed
devel-
opment at Cap Cana, a
luxury beachfront resort
just minutes from one of
the Dominican Republic’s
largest airports, isn’t yet in
place. But the prospect for
a resumption of the 2007
licensing deal would test the
limits of Donald Trump’s
pledge to halt new interna-
tional Trump-branded proj-
ects during his presidency.
The renewed pursuit of
the project shows that the
company believes it has
latitude to carry on signifi-
cant new activity overseas,
despite the president’s
pledge to avoid new foreign
development deals.
“No new foreign deals
will be made whatsoever
during the duration of
President Trump’s presi-
dency,” Trump lawyer Sheri
capcana.com via AP
This screen image from the capcana.com website
shows an article about the recent visit by Eric Trump to
the Dominican Republic. Eric Trump was photographed
touring the Cap Cana resort Feb. 2, with brothers
Ricardo and Fernando Hazoury.
Dillon of Morgan, Lewis
& Bockius LLC said last
month at a news conference.
Under the self-imposed rules
she described, new domestic
deals will be allowed, but
they will go through what
she described as a vigorous
vetting process.
Trump
Organization
general counsel Alan Garten
said the deal in the Domin-
ican Republic was never dead
even though nothing new has
been built or announced in a
decade. Garten noted that
Trump listed the deal on his
2015 government financial
disclosure but said it was not
listed on last year’s filings
because of what he described
as a lack of reportable assets
associated with the venture.
The effort to grandfather
such branding deals demon-
strates the flimsiness of
Trump’s pledge, said Richard
Painter, who served as the
ethics lawyer for the White
House during the George W.
Bush administration.
“They can take the tiniest
little past involvement in
something and then extend it
into an enormous new deal,”
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Painter said. “There’s no way
to distinguish between new
business and old business.”
The deal with the
Hazourys
contemplated
multiple stages of Trump-
themed projects at Cap Cana,
a master-planned resort town
minutes from the busy Punta
Cana International Airport.
The project is twice the size
of Manhattan, and Trump’s
part began with the sale of
68 multimillion-dollar home
sites known as “The Trump
Farallons.” Trump-branded
hotel, condominium and
golf course projects were
supposed to follow. At a
lavish party in Cap Cana in
2007, Trump “congratulated
fortunate buyers on their
investment,” according to a
press release by Cap Cana.
Trump’s deal never
progressed beyond the initial
sale of Trump-branded
vacant lots. Though he
described himself as a Cap
Cana project developer in
public statements, Trump
invested no money, and the
project stalled during the
2008 financial crisis. Further
damaging the deal’s pros-
pects, the developer wasn’t
paying Trump the licensing
fees on empty lots that had
already sold.
After hiring an outside
auditor, Trump sued in 2012,
alleging that the Hazourys
had hid many of the land
sales and kept the proceeds.
In an affidavit, Eric Trump
called the sales reports the
Cap Cana developers had
provided to the Trump Orga-
nization “an outright lie.”
Before the case could go
to trial, the Trump Organiza-
tion and Cap Cana reached
a confidential settlement in
2013.
During the following
three years, neither the
Trumps nor the Hazourys
announced further coop-
eration,
and
Trump’s
name largely disappeared
from marketing materials.
The exclusive real estate
brokerage for the project
dropped Trump’s name from
“The Farallons.”
Garten said that, despite
Cap Cana’s failure to deliver
on its side of the contract
and Trump’s demand that
the project stop using his
name during the litigation,
Trump never canceled the
underlying deal. The ulti-
mate settlement of Trump’s
suit against Cap Cana was
amicable, he said, and
further talks occurred well
before last November’s U.S.
election.
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SAGE Center hosts job fair
BOARDMAN — People can learn about career
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hiring during the Agriculture & Energy Job Fair.
The event is Wednesday, March 1 from 11 a.m. to 3
p.m. at the SAGE Center, 101 Olson Road, Boardman.
Participants can also learn about education and training
for high demand positions.
For more information call 541-481-7243 or go to
www.visitsage.com.
Ford invests $1B in driverless car quest
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ford Motor will spend $1
billion to take over a robotics startup to acquire more of
the expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having
a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021.
The big bet comes just a few months after the
Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of
Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics program.
The $1 billion investment will be spread over a
five-year period.
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