A4
Opinion
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Agricultural
trade needs
long-term plan
s Eastern Oregon
farmers reap their
year’s worth of work
from its fertile soil, national
and international pressures are
tugging and tearing at their
bottom line.
President Donald
Trump said last week his
administration and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
will use a Depression-era law
to provide up to $12 billion
in aid to farmers hurt by U.S.
trade policies.
Those policies — which
include placing taxes on
imported goods — have
been reciprocated by
foreign governments. That
has damaged the American
farmer’s ability to compete
on a level playing field in the
worldwide market.
Thus the $12 billion
bailout. Sure, it’s much
cheaper than the $700 billion
Economic Stabilization Act
that American taxpayers
paid to bail out the banking
and auto industries in 2008.
But the deal for farmers is
good for just one growing
season, and includes few
details on how exactly the
money will be dispersed.
If President Trump has not
solved our trade war by next
year, American farmers will
either see depressed prices,
or taxpayers will once again
be on the hook for another
bailout. And China, which
holds much of America’s debt,
will hold the final call.
There’s a political irony
in this too, given that the
political movement that
catapulted Trump to the White
House was partly inspired by
understandable disgust in the
American heartland over the
2008 federal bailouts.
This is a serious issue in
Eastern Oregon, perhaps
one of the most important
in a generation. For us to
survive on the east side of
the Columbia Basin, we must
make money from agriculture.
It’s the linchpin of our
economic system, and our
region depends on it.
So it’s understandable
to get nervous when D.C.
and Brussels, Moscow
and Beijing start haggling
over agricultural policy —
and when our traditional
customers start looking
elsewhere.
Reuters reported this week
that three major grain milling
companies in Mexico that
have purchased a majority of
their wheat and other grains
from the U.S. are turning to
Russian suppliers and other
options in Latin America.
Canimolt, a Mexican trade
group that represents 80
percent of Mexican milling
companies, told Reuters that
pre-emptively shifting import
priorities away from U.S.
suppliers is a way to send
a “message” to President
Trump over tariffs that many
U.S. allies have denounced.
Global U.S. wheat exports
have decreased by a total of
21 percent since the beginning
of the year.
A
Blue Mountain
EAGLE
P UBLISHED EVERY
W EDNESDAY BY
It’s not just foreign buyers
who are disappointed with
Trump’s recent activity.
The rather pro-Trump, pro-
business Wall Street Journal
wrote the administration “is
trying to fix an economic
problem of its own making
by putting the victims on the
federal dole.”
This issue has everything to
do with policies, not politics.
Like most Western farmers,
we remain convinced that
the Trans-Pacific Partnership
was the right way to lead on
international trade and get a
leg up on China.
Unfortunately, the
partnership was opposed by
a whole range of politicians
— Bernie Sanders, Hillary
Clinton and Trump all said
they were against it during
the 2016 campaign, as were a
majority of Americans polled
on the subject. Its demise is
a missed opportunity for fair
and free trade.
We understand there are
emergencies where federal
involvement is necessary.
Some argue that was the
case in 2008 as the American
economy collapsed, while
others disagree. Most all
believe it was necessary after
natural disasters, such as
hurricanes in Louisiana and
New Jersey.
Oregon’s federal delegation
has argued this week that
farmers harmed by the
Substation Fire need federal
help, too, and should get
a piece of the $12 billion
package.
All are good arguments
to have, and we imagine
conservatives would
argue against government
involvement more often
than not. And we think
most people would argue
against government bailouts
of problems that have
been government-created.
Spending $12 billion to get
back to where we were prior
to government action seems
wasteful and inefficient.
Trump disagrees, and
thinks he will pull the country
out on the other side with a
better trade deal.
“Negotiations are going
really well, be cool,” Trump
tweeted last week. “The end
result will be worth it!”
Maybe Trump is right and
the deals will get done. We
will commend him if that
turns out to be the case. But
it’s hard to “be cool” with
an economic linchpin in the
balance.
American farmers — just
like any industry — want
stable, practical international
trade policies. No one wants
to rely on government
subsidies. No one wants to
operate not knowing if those
subsidies will arrive or not.
A subsidy is just another
word for a bailout —
government picking winners
and losers and redistributing
taxpayer cash. Perhaps farmers
are winners now, but no
industry wants D.C. to have
the ability to push them onto
the other side of that ledger.
F ARMER ’ S F ATE
I’ve got ewe, babe
By Brianna Walker
To the Blue Mountain Eagle
“How do you feel about bummer
lambs?”
“Um, no.”
“What do you mean, no? They
are so cute.”
“I would love to, but unfortunate-
ly — no!”
“But they are free.”
“There are worse things I could
agree to. I just can’t think of any at
the moment.”
“Your Grandpa is getting some.”
“Let him get some then. But on
a scale of maybe to absolutely, I say
absolutely not for us! Do you know
how much work sheep can be?”
My newly-wedded husband and
I continued this conversation for
a few more minutes before I went
back to work, and he went back
to look at the “cute, adorable baby
lambs” with my Grandpa.
Girls often have the reputation
for being vague and expecting their
spouses to read between the lines,
but when I hung up the phone that
afternoon, I felt I had been overly
clear with my opinion — that is,
until I arrived home and discovered
eight bummer lambs snuggled under
a heat-lamp in the barn.
That’s when I realized some-
thing all too relevant with human
interactions: You may believe you
understand
what
you think someone
has said, but what
you don’t realize is
that what you heard
is not what they
meant.
Brianna
My
husband
Walker
also learned some-
thing
important.
No matter how much I say no, once
an animal (no matter how scraggly)
is on my property, I don’t have the
heart to turn it out.
At first, I grumbled as I put on
my boots to do middle-of-the-night
feedings — but soon those scraggly
animals won me over, and I for-
gave my husband for expecting his
opinion to come out of my mouth,
and my Grandpa for taking my ani-
mal-loving husband to a sheep farm.
That was 13 years — and many,
many scraggly animals — ago.
Those original eight lambs
quickly multiplied, and soon our
pasture was filled with sheep. One
of those original bummers, “Dirty
Harry,” gave birth the following
year to a waspy set of twins. We
kept the ewe lamb and named her
“Junior.” She could jump out of any-
thing. We should have given her a
middle name, just so she could have
understood more clearly how much
trouble she was in from incident to
incident.
As the herd grew, so did the rest
of our lives: farming, community, a
family of our own — and it wasn’t
long before our sheep became num-
bers on an ear tag instead of pet
names. Except for Junior. She was
one of a kind. She would come nuz-
zle for crackers, then abruptly turn
and jump over the fence. She was
wild and gentle, unpredictably pre-
dictable. She was a good mix of her
calm mother and her angry father,
who had once jumped the fence and
dented a visitor’s car door.
It was with a sad heart when I
found that my dear old girl had gone
to greener pastures. She marked the
end of an era. She was from a time
before kids, a time when my hus-
band and I were still learning about
marriage and communication. Not
to imply that we have graduated
those courses, but we definitely un-
derstand each other better than we
did that first year of marriage. Just
recently I was looking at buying a
couple of mini-goats. My husband
saw some of the photos I’d been
looking at online. He didn’t say
“no.” I think his response was some-
thing like, “I’d rather jump in a lake
of piranhas!”
I’m thinking about naming the
smaller of the two goats “Junior Jr.”
Brianna Walker occasionally
writes about the Farmer’s Fate for
the Blue Mountain Eagle.
L ETTERS TO THE E DITOR
‘Senseless,
despicable act’
To the Editor:
On July 17, Res, our beautiful,
friendly Siberian husky, was lured
from our yard in Prairie City. She
was found, purely by accident, on
July 21, high in the hills northwest
of Dixie Creek. She had been shot
and thrown over the side of a re-
mote road where she couldn’t be
seen from a vehicle driving by.
It is sad and frightening to know
that someone in our area is capa-
ble of such a senseless, despicable
act. What or who might be the next
victim? Was this getting even for
something or just to kill?
Bob and Dottie Miller
Prairie City
‘Caught in
the crossfire’
To the Editor:
Mass shootings have sparked
a national debate on how to keep
firearms out of the hands of those
who might go on a rampage. At the
same time veteran suicides occur
at the rate of about 22 per day. I’ve
cautioned before that attempts to
stop this should be well reasoned
out. A knee-jerk reaction has hap-
pened just as I predicted. The July
issue of the DAV (Disabled Ameri-
can Veterans) magazine has an arti-
cle, “Caught in the Crossfire,” that
should cause outrage.
To quote, “In 1998, the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
adopted a new procedure that de-
fined ‘mental defective’ to include
someone who ‘lacks the mental
capacity to contract or manage
their own affairs due to injury or
disease.’
“For veterans, this means that if
the VA decides a veteran is mentally
incompetent and appoints a fiducia-
ry, a prohibiting record is created
and sent to the FBI. The FBI enters
the veteran’s record in the National
Instant Criminal Background Check
System, which contains names of
people who are flagged and their
access to firearms restricted.
“As of the start of 2017, federal
agencies had contributed 171,083
records to the system’s index under
the new provision enacted by the
ATF.
“The VA contributed 98.1 per-
cent of those, or 167,815.”
It’s a four-page article, much
too long for a daily paper, but in a
nutshell, if you are a veteran who
has served in combat and suffer
from PTSD you will have to de-
cide whether to get help and see a
VA mental health provider and lose
your gun rights or try to beat it on
your own.
I’ve said it before, the VA should
be prohibited from adding names of
those who used a firearm in defense
of the country to any gun-banning
list, and the ATF agents should be
encouraged to get a real job with the
border patrol.
Steve Culley
Baker City
Editor’s note: Read the
full article at dav.org/learn-more/
news/2018/veterans-guns.
L
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