From the studios of Foreign Journal Broadcast, this is Ag Day. The president's accusations against China in a Thursday night primetime speech are now fueling trade worries. Thanks for joining us. I'm Michelle Ruck. Haley has the day off. President Trump claimed China has interfered in U.S. elections for years. The president declassified hundreds of documents on Thursday. He claimed two sets of them contain examples of Chinese interference. First, they show that over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. The second set of documents we are releasing reveals that members of the deep state, very, very famous group of people, in many cases, in our intelligence agency, work to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China's sinister election meddling. President Trump has repeatedly claimed he won the 2020 election and the victory was taken from him due to election interference. Previous investigations have found no evidence of this. American farmers were just starting to see soybean purchases from China come through again after are months of no news. So could these threats undermine that? Tyne Morgan heard from a former U.S. Trade Representative Friday about what could come next. Well, Michelle, we're here at the Iowa Economic Summit put on by Iowa Farm Bureau and former Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer was very clear. We can't view China as we have in the past. In agriculture, we often see China as a customer, but he says the reality is China views us as an adversary. But the question is today, if they'll live up to that recent commitment of buying at least $17 billion of agricultural products in addition to what they said they would buy with soybeans. And according to Lighthizer, as long as President Trump keeps pressure on them, they will live up to that commitment. So I think that China will live up to it in the short term, yes. As I tried to explain, I think that if you're depending long term on China as a key part of your export market, there's a lot of risk. Now, Lighthizer made the comment that no group is discriminated against more when it comes to trade than agriculture. But it's not just soybeans that were the topic of discussion here in Iowa. U.S. Meat Export Federation says red meat exports have been a big problem in China. That's because pork has a total tariff of 47 percent. Beef is now at 22 percent. And that's why they are backing this board of trade concept that's in the latest agreement with China. Reporting from Ankeny, Iowa, I'm Tyne Morgan for Ag Day. Rubion has withdrawn its request for the U.S. to place duties on glyphosate imports. It's owned by Bayer and oversees the company's U.S. glyphosate business. On June 30th, Bayer filed a petition with the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department. Bayer alleged glyphosate coming in from China is being sold at less than fair market value. Now it says it's withdrawing this request after speaking to farmers and trade associations. Bayer plans to continue using its dynamic pricing instead. The U.S. is also back and forth with Brazil right now. The USTR has decided to impose a 25 percent tariff on most imports and Brazil says it will fight back with reciprocal tariffs. The U.S. has excluded some Brazilian products from the heavy tariff, coffee, orange juice and beef. This is the Trump administration tries to fight food inflation. The decision to exclude Brazilian beef from the additional 25 percent tariffs has drawn fire from cattle groups. RCAF officials say Brazilian imports have contributed to the ongoing liquidation of the U.S. cattle herd. And we will continue to see the exodus of American ranchers from our industry. And this is because the effect of increased imports is to lower demand for domestic cattle. The tariff exclusion will maintain record large U.S. beef imports seen the last three years, as Brazil has exceeded its 65,000 metric ton tariff rate quota. Even though Brazil has been paying a 26.4% over quota tariff rate, that doesn't phase them a bit. They blow right past that and have been importing record volumes of beef or exporting to the United States record volumes of beef for the past several years. Well, when you look at Brazil, yeah, Brazil's exports to the U.S. market are up over 40% just in the first four months this year, close to a billion dollars. While the Trump administration is limiting the tariff to lower beef prices it proven ineffective The savings that a competitive market would generally pass on to consumers is being captured by the highly concentrated corporate meat packers and retailers that are simply using these imports to increase their margins. There's also a danger to food security as two of the biggest beef processors are Brazilian-owned controlling half of the beef in the U.S. JBS is the largest meatpacker in the world. It's in their best interest for us to continue to be dependent upon foreign imports and to continue to shut down plants to put pressure on the price that are paid to farmers and ranchers in America. Bacchus says NCBA also wants the USTR to hold Brazil accountable for violations uncovered by their investigation. In addition to deforestation, they're concerned about protecting the U.S. herd and consumers. You know, they failed to report multiple cases of atypical BSE that they, you know, until recently they didn't report high pathogen influenza. They're no longer vaccinating for foot and mouth disease. A separate probe into Brazilian forced labor could add an additional 12.5 percent duty in the next week on imports. Again, beef being excluded. Right now, these tariffs on Brazil are set to go into place on July 22nd. That's this Wednesday. Thousands of workers will be gone from the agricultural workforce by the end of this month, as temporarily protected status for immigrants from two countries is expiring. Status for Syrian immigrants expired last Friday the 17th, and Haitian immigrants lose their status this coming Friday the 24th. Tyne Morgan spoke to the president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers about where this loss of workers could be felt. Well, joining us now for Ag Day in-depth, we have John Holley, President and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers. John, talk us through this. Which sector of the ag industry do you think could see the greatest impact from these visas expiring? Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me on today. Obviously, the visa expiration that we're seeing in the Haitian and Syrian community is going to be an impact for agriculture. We're going to see impact particularly in fruit and vegetable production in Florida, also in the Carolinas. A lot of these communities work in different commodities, but those are the regions in which a lot of these workers are operating. And then on the processing side, we'll obviously see some impact in the meat sector as well. Is there a rough estimate of how many jobs these immigrants are filling right now before this ruling came about? Yeah, so our friends at Forward U.S. had put together a study recently, and they put the number at about 15,000 people in agriculture, in Haiti in particular. And that doesn't include processing. That's about another 7,000 that are involved in processing. Some of it's not agricultural processing, but the majority is. So it's a significant part of the workforce. But when you look longer term, what's at risk? Yeah, what's at risk continues to be the future of American agriculture. And I think that's what organizations like ours, NCAE, continues to remind policymakers as we go from one kind of labor crisis that may be in the headlines only a little short time to another one is that the structural need for agricultural labor reform still exists here in America. We've waited 40 years for Congress to act on this. And if we don't act, these kind of issues are not just going to be one-time things. They're going to be issues that continue to erode the rural fabric of this country. Grain markets ended the week on a strong note, but the record cattle spiral continued. I'll walk you through both sides of the spectrum in markets now. And farmers could see deeper losses in 2027. The new report from the American Farm Bureau Federation and how it stacks up against past years. And sleeping with the goats, today's picture of the day is from L&L Farms in Ossipee, New Hampshire. It's near the main border, about an hour northeast of Concord. You can see this young girl needed a nap, and these two goats were watching over her while the photographer snapped the photo. Ag Day is brought to you by Pioneer. Pioneer brand corn is the leader in exclusive high-yield potential genetics to maximize your return on investment. Your field knows the one that yields pioneer brand corn. Farmers could experience even more loss in 2027. The American Farm Bureau Federation based this finding on farmers who grow nine principal crops. Here's the chart outlining the projected losses. This year it's at $31 billion. Next year it's projected at $32 billion. It has been the worst in recent years. Now the realized losses in 2024 were a historic billion and it was billion in 2025 These losses are expected with no federal assistance AFBF writes global instability pushing production costs higher is partially to blame. It also says long-term policy solutions from Congress are needed to stabilize the farm economy. An economist with the Iowa Farm Bureau tells Agday he's optimistic for his state. Corn is a bright spot on the export side of things. we have record corn exports from our last crop. Part of that's because we just produced so much corn last year. Far and away the largest corn crop we ever produced. We have to keep that up again and again and again, and that's a hard thing to do, but that is a source of optimism. He adds Iowa is also seeing more growth in the dairy industry. Iowa is now in the top 10 states for dairy production. One month from today, I'll be bringing you reports from the annual Pro Farmer Crop Tour, and we have a special Ag Day deal, 50% off registration. Head to agweb.com. You can't miss the Crop Tour Yield Academy prompts. The special code is easy, Ag Day. Hope to see you on the tour. Ag Day is brought to you by FBN Finance. Experienced loan advisors putting farmers first with farmland rates as low as 4.99%. Grains ending Friday to the plus side while we saw cattle continue to spiral. Sean Hackett is in with analysis and grains higher on Friday, higher for the week. Let's talk about what's driving this war, whether those are a couple of the factors, right? Yeah, I really think it's the geopolitics of Russia, Ukraine, the Kurch Strait being shut down, the lack of wheat exports coming out of that region, the re-excitement of the oil market worries over the region, crimping supplies again. And so next week, later next week, I think the market is going to be looking for whether this is going to be just a shorter term issue or it's going to extend beyond July. If the market believes it's going to extend beyond July, then I think the wheat market needs to price in more premium. And the corn market has been begrudgingly following wheat. And that might give reason for the corn market to put some more premium on as well. So we do have corn and wheat, like you said, they're going higher. But the big question is, is how much higher did they go? What do we need to keep the bulls fed and keep the momentum going or the rally going? Certainly on corn, I feel that if you're going to get something for corn's sake, you need the weather in the core grain belt for the next two weeks to look less ideal than the models are showing right now. If we get to kind of time the rains and we lack high heat in the core grain belt, then it's going to be hard for the corn market to get that juice on the weather front. I do believe, however, that, you know, the continuous purchases that we've been seeing from China on soybeans and the re-excitement of the energy market, you know, that's something that we want to continue to look for as further fuel for the soybean market to maybe actually exceed the highs that we saw in late spring. Yeah. Beans and bean oil did have a good week as well. Petal market, not so much. We've had a record sell off. Let's talk about how much lower do you think we have to go? Are funds done liquidating? I don't think they have finished liquidating. I think you have to look back at the big break we had last year when we actually hit, I think, $3 on the feeders on the nearbys and we hit $2 on the live cattle on the nearby. A lot of times those prior spike lows are magnets or targets for the market to reach before an expunge or a liquidation event comes to its crescendo. Thanks for that. Sean Acker with Hacker Financial Advisors and Markets Now. Good morning and happy Monday. We're going to start this work week seeing extremely warm temperatures across the United States. You can see over 100 degrees, especially near Oklahoma and even Kansas and the Nebraska area. If we move out west, 104 degrees in Phoenix, but a lot of areas in the 80s, 90s, and even 100s as we head into this work week. Jumping to the jet stream right now, you're going to notice we're going to see a trough over here. So that's going to be kind of lower pressure up here in the north and northeast portions of the United States. But a high pressure dome is going to try to park itself right here around the four corners right here in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado. And you're going to notice that's going to linger for most of the week. Here's Tuesday jumping into Wednesday and all the way through Friday as well. And a lot of times this is going to cause these areas to kind of stay above average and a lot of consistent temperatures as well If we jump to that temperature outlook jump to that temperature is going to be the 22nd gonna see right here, the I said, those cooler belo in the upper sixties, ev of them. But then over he we're gonna see a lot of even into the nineties an Taking a look at Ionia, Michigan, 85 for the high, 69 degrees for that low. Mostly cloudy skies overall. Rutland, Iowa, thunderstorms this evening, 93 degrees for the high, 65 degrees for their low. And McEwen, Tennessee, 92 for the high, 75 for the low. Machine repeat found a sweet story at auction this week. The tractor who found its way back home. A Colorado goat is going viral after leading firefighters to the flames. the safe path she laid out for them. Ready to unlock more for every acre? Join us at Yield Academy, August 20th in Rochester, Minnesota. Then stick around for the crop tour finale. Head online to register today. Good tractors get to stay in the family, but there was a mishap for an Illinois farmer. This week, Machinery Pete is sharing how this John Deere found its way back. Well, folks, I posted a picture on our Machinery Pete's social media page last week that got a lot of people smiling and I think kind of scratching their head, feeling old like myself. But 36 years ago, when I started compiling auction prices in 1989 at the time, a 30-year-old tractor was a tractor like a John Deere 830. And we were calling them antiques at the time. Now, a 30-year-old tractor today, you can see in the post there, I said a John Deere 8300 and I think that does not seem possible. But hey, father time loses no battles there. Now, today I was covering an auction in Mount Pulaski, Illinois. We're filming for our Machinery Pete TV show, Farm Retirement Auction for Kevin and Kathy Willham. Great folks, Kevin known far and wide for painting and restoring a lot of John Deere tractors but all types of equipment. And almost a 30-year-old tractor, you can see it over my noggin there, That 1997 John Deere 7810, 6,513 hours, sold for $62,000. Now, pretty strong price there because coming into the sale today, the last 35 7810s I'd seen sold at auction between 5,000 and 8,000 hours, that average was just over $58,000. And again, it sold for $62,000 today. And oh, by the way, over my shoulder here, the 1988 John Deere 4450 two-wheel drive, 3576 actual hours. So for 44,000 bucks which is pretty cool but the really cool part was who bought it. Young guy Andy Polly from down by Springfield Illinois and it was his late grandfather Bob Polly's tractor and my auctioneer friend Mike Mosky did a great job on the sale today. When he advertised the sale he put Bob Polly's name on the sale bill and that got the attention of the family and And Andy wound up here today, told me he was very nervous, but he got it bought for $44,000. It's always great fun to see a grandson find and purchase his grandfather's tractor and bring it home to the farm. Goldie, the goat has grown from an internet sensation to a community advocate. The message she's spreading on social media after helping Colorado firefighters. Be sure to check out the Moving Iron podcast with Casey Seymour and Machinery Pete with new episodes released every Thursday. You can find Moving Iron on all the popular podcast platforms, plus agweb.com and Farm Journal's YouTube channel. Goldie the Goat is going viral. She even has a t-shirt in her honor. Goldie was on the front lines with Colorado Springs firefighters. her presence was not planned. She found the firefighters and led them to a remote brush fire. She was actually trying to take us down an area that wasn't maybe quite as rocky, wasn't quite as slippery, maybe had better footing. So she was obviously a pro at her job. Goldie then got to work by grazing on dry brush near the fire. That fire is now 100% contained. A portion of the proceeds from Goldie's t-shirts will go to the Castle Rock Professional Firefighters Association. Goldie also has her own Facebook page now where she advocates for fire safety. That's all the time we have for today. Thanks for watching. For all of us at Ag Day, I'm Michelle Rook. Have yourself a great day.
