Why do US trade deals always seem to involve agriculture? I'm in favor of fair/open trade, and in my mind that would seem to come down to just trying to remove barriers, restrictions and tariffs for all products and industries equally. But it always seems to involve custom agreements for mass purchases of agriculture. Why is that?
I guess it comes to supply and demand.
Other countries want US technology and services.
They don't want US agricultural products as eluded to in the above thread.
Thus, trying to sell stuff others don't want ends up making more noise compared to selling stuff they do want.
The US does this because:
1. National security (US farmers wouldn't grow stuff if nobody bought it, which is a problem if the US ever goes to war. Then, they might suddenly need it.)
2. Vote banks (Rural US happens to be the key in deciding elections and support for laws. Due to the electoral college and each state having 2 senators.)
3. Ideology (The reasons you mentioned. Free market ...)
But why does US farmer wanting to export to EU don't just enforce EU norms on food production ? Do not use hormones or forbidden pesticides in the EU, enforce traceability of all all inputs. Then they could negotiate easily with EU for their products, checked by EU validated organisations, to enter the EU market. I often think that it's not for the some free market ideology but just to force other countries (like EU) to abandon any normative sovereignty.
I understand that a global agricultural market with a single norm would be better for mercantile exchanges, but for the single producer EU (or China, or whatever) is a sufficiently big market to be targeted exclusively if they want. OMC should not conflate normative barriers with tariff barriers, they have a real purpose (maybe USA is wrong to eat so much pesticides).
They didn't want to change their practice to export, nor wanted to have any limitation, but they finally did and recently got a bigger share of the import quota.
Because the US produces a massive amount of agricultural product and the ag lobby is gigantic in the US. If you attempt to cut out the ag politicians you'll quickly find yourself unable to get bills passed in Washington.
Well, it's pretty obvious why they do it (more exports, therefore more money, for the US), but I find it extremely hypocritical that they do it... "let's make a free trade deal where we can sell you food that our government extremely subsidizes" well that just doesn't sound very much like a free market, more like a state-subsidized one... then they have the audacity to complain when foreign governments do the same (e.g. with aircraft companies).
> As an aside: I will hear this ocassionally from Americans visiting here. That the food at McDonald's tastes better. This is probably why. Fewer chemicals, more local produce.
>Europe actually regulates this ingredient because they know this man-made chemical was never intended to be consumed by humans. This whole time McDonalds has known about this and chooses to continue to serve it’s US citizens silly putty.
What does one mean by, "accept American beef stuffed with hormones"? Would individual buyers not get the option to make choices? Would labeling be prohibited?
"Personal choice" is incredibly overrated (in the US, at last). Actually, most of the time (as the "nudge theory" shows), individual choice is mostly socially constructed.
Having a choice and using the choice are different. Nudge theory is heavily critiqued and rightfully so - we know Choice Architecture is a thing, but humans are still free agents. Just because you don't like the choices people make doesn't mean you can then constrain their ability to make choice.
Just like you have the "choice" between cheap veggies (sparkled with monsanto's health elixir that may or may not be damaging to you and the environment) vs local/bio veggies which cost a bit more, sure. Once you flood a market with cheap alternatives it becomes a race to the bottom and it's a losing battle for the customer. Plus it's not like you'll walk into a fast food / street restaurant and have the choice between cheap imported beef vs local beef either.
As far as I can tell it was the classic "Accept our deal or face consequences" type of US foreign policies. I can't be the only one thinking that importing meat from the other side of the world for a purely economical reason is insanity, especially when the local meat market is perfectly fine and of better quality.
Reminds me of all the meat scandals we had in the last decade in France, all of it coming from foreign countries, all of it due to companies trying to increase their margin at all cost: horse meat sold as beef, sick/old animals sold as healthy, minced meat made primarily skin, cartilage and other by-products, yummy...
> a race to the bottom and it's a losing battle for the customer
How dare those customers get to have access to cheap food! They should only be able to buy organic, local approved veggies from their local overpriced grocery store!
France didn't want to import US Beef (fair), the US threatened to not import French cheese in retaliation (seemingly also rather fair).
One is a cheap high protein food wildly available produced by well paid workers, the other is a very expensive geographically protected cheese product.
You may not like US beef, and you don't have to eat it, and you're probably well off enough that you get to make that choice. Protecting a domestic cheese production probably doesn't increase food availability for the poor - nor is that domestic cheese production some health food.
Sorry, I don't want crappy "food for the poor" and healthy "food for the rich". I find this dystopian, and a false dichotomy.
And those advocating are usually those "well enough" that don't have to suffer the "food for the poor" themselves.
>Protecting a domestic cheese production probably doesn't increase food availability for the poor - nor is that domestic cheese production some health food.
As part of the typical French diet, as is its use in France (and Europe), it's much healthier than the kind of crap passed for food to the poor in the US, or the fads peddled year after year as some "miracle food" to richer consumers (quinoa, chia, kale, and such).
Sorry, a bit of-topic, but is kale that expensive? In France it's like twice the price of romanesco (despite being harder to prepare tbh) but still pretty cheap (like 6€/kg).
Yea, let's till under every square acre of land to produce massive amounts of corn that we turn into animal feed extremely inefficiently, oh and pump out gigatons of HFCS fattening up the world around us.
Lets understand why we're here. Corn was first to be hybridized and resulting seed marketed. As yields grew, farming became more stable and farmers less poor. Corn got cheap and many commercial applications (starch, syrup, protein, fibre) seized on it as a practical source for many products.
Like VHS vs Betamax, sure there are better choices for food and commercial uses. But corn won, won early and won big. It'd cost trillions to switch to something else now.
So complain all we like; still we find ourselves in the same place. Corn is king.
Strangely it did not happen in France[1], we do not use as much corn sub-products in our agriculture and food, I think it's mainly used for feeding our poultry; still a bad idea as corn is not really adapted to our climate (not enough tropical rain I suppose as corn is a tropical plant coming from Mexico), most of the farmers crying when there are water restrictions are corn farmers in France.
Biggest french region cultivating corn is Les Landes which was a big swamp before the 18/19th century, maybe because it's more adapted to corn as it rains often (oceanic climate) but is hotter than Brittany.
I don't think it is in Europe? The recipes vary a bit according to tastes, so I'd assume sugar is from beet in European soft drinks. Wouldn't make much sense to import syrup for such a bulk product.
You are missing a key factor: government subsidies, which incentivize maximum corn production. Cut the subsidies and the desired change would happen; we would still have corn to eat, but much less HFCS and Ethanol (another corn product that causes more harm than good).
> France didn't want to import US Beef (fair), the US threatened to not import French cheese in retaliation (seemingly also rather fair).
The local shop didn't want the mafia's "protection" (fair), the mafia killed the shop owner (seemingly also rather fair).
More seriously I don't think allowing foreign entities to destroy your local means of productions brings any good in the long term. Once your local producers are out of business you're essentially relying on the goodwill of some for profit companies to not increase the price of their products, or you're at the mercy of "The Market™?". Especially for something as fundamental as food.
If your local means of production means either forcing other people to buy it, or keeping the price of food artificially inflated, maybe your local means of production isn't real great.
This isn't the mafia killing a shop owner for not buying them. This is your customer leaving because they don't like your prices.
You don't get to force people to do business with you.
> keeping the price of food artificially inflated, maybe your local means of production isn't real great.
Really makes you think about how Europe did for thousands of years before our great American saviors helped us. Local food wasn't expensive before globalisation, talk to your grandparents you'll see how different things were not so long ago.
> This is your customer leaving because they don't like your prices.
You do understand that when the market is not flooded with cheap subsidised alternatives that issue doesn't exist ? Fresh/local products were not a niche market a few decades ago, it was simply all that was available. You didn't have to buy cheap bananas from costa rica because you simply didn't have access to bananas, so you bought local apples &c. you couldn't buy cheap beef from the US because all the meat available was local and priced so that people could afford it.
> You don't get to force people to do business with you.
But apparently you get to say "Accept our subpar products or we will make you pay!", and I genuinely fail to see the difference in practice. If this isn't some form of abuse of authority I don't know what it is.
>> keeping the price of food artificially inflated, maybe your local means of production isn't real great.
>Really makes you think about how Europe did for thousands of years before our great American saviors helped us. Local food wasn't expensive before globalisation, talk to your grandparents you'll see how different things were not so long ago.
So what? French consumers choosing American import meat over locally sourced meat is not America's fault.
The parent's point totally stands, whether you like it or not. If French consumers have a choice between locally sourced meat and imported American one, and the majority buys the latter, then that's obviously on the French.
I mean, think what the alternative even means: The majority of French consumers would choose American meat, yet a minority of French farmers would rather disallow their own people to have a choice. If these farmers are so integral to French society, then surely that same society would buy locally sourced meat. But they apparently wouldn't/don't.
>> You don't get to force people to do business with you.
>But apparently you get to say "Accept our subpar products or we will make you pay!", and I genuinely fail to see the difference in practice. If this isn't some form of abuse of authority I don't know what it is.
That's literally just normal trade between countries. France does that just like every other entity involved in global trade that has to keep its own interests in mind(meaning all of them.)
But you force them to compete with you. And this kills people as well:
France does not have as much available land as the US does, we cannot squander it away. We can't afford a spill like the one in WV from a few year back, it would kill hundreds of people. and destroy a high percentage of our lands. I'm pretty sure the spill have never made to the national headline: that's how much land you have. In France we would talk about this for years.
Our farms are way closer from the cities than yours, we cannot afford to feed our beefs and chickens with antibiotics and just hope for the best and pray it will have no impact.
Please understand that we don't have the same population concentration, nor the same money to hide/fix the issues caused by the farming industry.
The solution to this problem is for consumers to organise and buy produce on their terms, by forming food co-operatives.
Buy the food you collectively want in bulk from the wholesalers and then sell it back to yourselves as customers. This removes the overhead of profit (and often labour, the highest cost, if co-op members do shifts at the store) and in many cases marketing, packaging and other costs. It thus allows you to have access to healthy, fresh, local, sustainable, etc. food at a reasonable price.
I asked the same question of the tweet's author and I realize now he was trying to describe the EU's ban on hormones. I think every region/community should be allowed to decide what is banned. It was not clear to me from his wording what he meant by "demanding that Europe accept American beef stuffed with hormones".
The issue is not really hormones (they are the political reason, but not the technical one). The true issue is the antibotic abuse: this is a bio threat, especially for farmers and rural guys. Let's say you're walking your dog in the countryside. You fall somewhere, it gets infected, so you get some antibiotics. Those antibiotics do not work after 3 days because they were used in the next door farm, and bacteria is used to them.
Now you have two solutions:
* you are educated (or at least knowledgeable) and you know that if the antibiotics do not show any effect after 3 days, this is caused by resistance, so you go to the doctor again and he gives you type2 antibiotics.
* You are not knowledgable and you let the infection get worse. You have two new solutions:
* * You're young and in good enough shape: depending on the bacteria type, you will suffer for some time, probably have troubles walking and lasting scars.
* * Are you old and/or in a bad shape? Tough luck. Depending on the bacteria type, you might die.
Allowing countries to decide what to ban is just saying that ag goods are exempt from free trade.
Why should the US put up with this? We have a natural advantage in agriculture, with very high productivity.
If you're against free trade, ok, but that's going to apply to European exports of all kinds. And if the trade motivation for links with Europe goes away, so does the motivation for defending Europe via NATO. NATOxit (NATOff? NATOut?) would cost Europe enormously.
You argue that sovereign states should not be allowed to regulate what gets put into food? Should our FDA have no regulation authority over food?
We certainly should have free trade for fungible goods and services. Anything we permit to be made and sold internally we should permit to be imported. But we should have the power to regulate hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides in food and we should respect the decisions of other countries to regulate what they permit in their food.
You seem to be against treaties of any kind, which by their nature put limits on the behavior of sovereign states.
I strongly reject the idea that food is somehow exempt. This is moral posturing and, like the noxious and genocidal anti-GMO position, is being used as a cloak for frank protectionism by ag interests that would be destroyed by superior overseas competition.
Not at all. I am reticent to tell others what they should do within their own borders. Treaties regarding external interactions are important.
> This is moral posturing
It is not posturing to prefer that I not have to personally vet the provenance of everything I buy in the grocery store. We know what happens when there is insufficient regulation of food. You get melamine in infant formula because it boosted somebody's profit margin.
Anyway, what trade treaties require is that health regulations have a rational basis, not be merely pretexts for protectionism. Too much of what I see from Europe is the latter, not the former.
The UK has recently introduced a 'sugar tax' on soft drinks. Try buying a soft drink without artificial sweeteners in. Then there's the 'may contain nuts' problem, if a manufacturer can't definitively say that a product doesn't contain hormones they'll just cover themselves by not guaranteeing it.
So no it wouldn't really be the choice of individual buyers.
As a French, I didn't expect to see José Bové on HN. He is indeed a controversial person. A lot of his action where as much praised as they were criticized. Especially when it came to GMO which he was fiercely against.
But overall, all his fight, kind of as what the twitter thread says, where against globalization (in the food industry) and in some way for protectionism within France / EU. I know a lot of people consider protectionism a bad thing, but a free market only works when the different actor have roughly the same power. It was (and it still is) not the case, as US had the power to make other actor accept their term and their product, which was heavily damaging the local farmer.
He's the kind of person you need to have if you want to fight against globalisation. Sure he's extreme, sure some of his actions are barely legal, if not straight up illegal, sure many people don't like him... But look on the other side, do you think companies like monsanto play it fair and nice ? You need people equally motivated to keep the system somewhat balanced.
Just because something is legal/illegal, doesn't make it right/wrong. I think we will all have to start getting comfortable with illegal things happening -- and even participating in them -- if we want to stop environmental catastrophe.
Who is "we"? I didn't get to take part in designing any system of right and wrong. And it's very obvious to anyone that looks closely that the only people who have any significant influence over that system are coming from a small powerful and wealthy minority.
The answer lies in your first sentence: the system “we” designed ... when you feel the system currently in power does not represent your interests laws are options, not hard rules.
I find that French farmers have a tendency to fight and yell against globalisation but don’t bat an eye when it profits them. French agriculture is heavily subsidised too which hurts other European countries.
No, but as a French citizen I get my share of headlines about protests and since I am originally from one of the shafted countries I also hear the other side. I am pretty sure that this happens everywhere else too though.
You are not wrong. But at the same time, you can see from their scope: They have to compete against countries where the cost of labor and the cost of living is much less. Meaning, they can hardly sell their product as the same price as farmer in some other country while making ends-meet.
This is nothing new and a known consequence of globalization. Especially when their is no/low tariff and cheap transportation, as is the case within the EU.
This mean that, either you let some industry die off and rely entirely on importation (which we did for a lot of manufacturing where everything is know produce in mostly Asian country) or you heavily subsidized it to keep it alive.
In the case of agriculture, France heavily subsidized it to keep it alive as it is considered a strategical industry. It is a huge sink hole for France, and as far as I know for the EU. I don't know if they really profit from it financially speaking, but they do need it for soft power and to not being subject of more influence from other country.
Overall, their is probably some hypocrisy about globalization within farmer. But isn't it also a natural human behavior ? We tend to scream about injustice unless this injustice profit us.
Yeah, as I live in France but when I come back to my country of origin I also see the other side of this mess.
I am no economist but I think that the low cost of transport is one of the factors that could be somehow influenced. We keep trucking stuff thousands of kilometers whereas it could grow and be processed just next-door.
There's no free market in China. The government is pretty strict in banning foreign enterprises (that can only operate in China if they're co-owned 50% by Chinese) in order to develop local companies. So basically restricting the more powerful player and empowering the less powerful one. That (i.e. non-free markets) has worked wonders for them.
That wasn't the free market. The US decided to make it cheaper to ship goods from China to the US then it is for businesses in the US to ship inside the US. Government intervention all the way.
> If you're wondering why there was, and continues to be, resentment of the U.S. around the globe, the McDonald's protest is a pretty good example of how America manages to look like a bully to suit its economic interests.
but the US didn't sentence this guy to prison, it was French courts
The point of the thread is that US manages to look like a bully not because it sentenced him to prison (which it didn't, indeed), but because it placed tariffs on EU agricultural products in retaliation for it refusing its beef stuffed with hormones.
That whole twitter stream is a good example of "bias" claims that seem to actually explicitly be "this article doesn't say exactly what I want it to say".
I don't think the word "attack" is as loaded a phrase as that person thinks it is... and less loaded than the tweets linked to.
"If you're wondering why there was, and continues to be, resentment of the U.S. around the globe, the McDonald's protest is a pretty good example of how America manages to look like a bully to suit its economic interests."
This feels like an exaggerated trope to me.
There's certainly some concept of resentment of the US around the globe. Having traveled to a decent number of places and lived outside the US, however, I can't say that it's a significant amount among countries that the US makes some effort to maintain a cordial relationship with.
A trade war involving tariffs and food regulations is still rather minor in the grand scheme of diplomacy and conflict.
Sure but I'm not talking about a vacation or retirement. But a choice to live your life in either. Just my own estimation, so take that FWIW
Not trying to trash them or start a flamewar. The French people and government do have a reputation in the Anglo world, probably equally as much as the US does in Europe. The country-side and cities are very nice there no doubt.
As far as the reputation of them being rude I've heard it is more of a Paris thing (which I guess would translate to a New York thing) and not so much outside of Paris. I've not been there in many years but I had a very nice time, even in Paris, and I would love to go back.
I'm not from the US so depending on the relations at the time it might be a different experience. I assume when they were trashed in US media for not joining the Iraq war I there were at least some resentment against US tourists.
I know a couple that have an incredible apartment in the Keys florida. Really amazing. They are both French Us binational. One of them got sick. They live in Paris ever since.
And that does not seem to be an isolate event : I can read weekly horror stories in Hacker News about health bills in the U.S.
Well, in the case of citizenship I might pick France (it is #1 on the nationality index, after all) due to the EU and freedom of movement in the largest number of desirable places.
As an American so patriotic I practically have an A on my forehead, I can tell you that your 95% is way, way off. France, as a country and a culture, has essentially perfected the art of living. Even if (like me) you don’t like Paris, there are towns and villages throughout France that are heaven on Earth. Until I visited them, I could not believe such beautiful, happy and serene places existed.
As an American who hangs out with a handful of french nationals, I'm not convinced enough to bet my citizenship on it, and this is coming from someone who likes both wine and cheese.
No offense, but as far as I can tell this doesn't even try to respond to the claim that there are great cheeses coming from the US today. It just propagates a largely irrelevant presumption that could be perfectly compatible with what it seems you're trying to disagree with.
In France, Mac Donald is an integral part of the French landscape, just like KFC or Burger King. Attacking this chain for primary anti-Americanism makes no sense.
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