Total Catastrophe For U.S. Corn Production: Only 30% Of U.S. Corn Fields Have Been Planted – 5 Year Average Is 66%

2019 is turning out to be a nightmare that never ends for the agriculture industry.  Thanks to endless rain and unprecedented flooding, fields all over the middle part of the country are absolutely soaked right now, and this has prevented many farmers from getting their crops in the ground.  I knew that this was a problem, but when I heard that only 30 percent of U.S. corn fields had been planted as of Sunday, I had a really hard time believing it.  But it turns out that number is 100 percent accurate.  And at this point corn farmers are up against a wall because crop insurance final planting dates have either already passed or are coming up very quickly.  In addition, for every day after May 15th that corn is not in the ground, farmers lose approximately 2 percent of their yield.  Unfortunately, more rain is on the way, and it looks like thousands of corn farmers will not be able to plant corn at all this year.  It is no exaggeration to say that what we are facing is a true national catastrophe. (Read More...)

Investors May Be Laughing At China’s “People’s War” Now, But Here Is Why They Won’t Be Laughing For Long…

Wall Street is still treating this crisis as a temporary trade dispute, but the Chinese see things completely differently.  At this point, the narrative in China is that the U.S. has deeply insulted their national honor, and every angry statement from U.S. officials is just digging the knife in a little bit deeper.  The Chinese began their retaliation to Trump’s new tariffs with some new tariffs of their own, but they won’t be stopping there.  As I stated yesterday, China literally has hundreds of different ways that they can hurt us, and the longer this crisis goes the more likely it is that they will utilize all of those weapons. (Read More...)

Stocks Crater – 3.5 Trillion Dollars In Global Market Cap Wiped Out – China Considers “Dumping U.S. Treasuries”

Wall Street responded to our escalating trade war with China by throwing a bit of a temper tantrum.  On Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 617 points, and that was the worst day for the Dow since January 3rd.  But things were even worse for the Nasdaq.  It had its worst day since December 4th, and overall the Nasdaq is now down 6.3 percent in just the last six trading sessions.  Of course it isn’t just in the United States that stocks are declining.  Since last Monday, a total of approximately $3.5 trillion in market cap has been wiped out on global stock markets.  And since it doesn’t look like we are going to get any sort of a trade deal any time soon, this could potentially be just the beginning of our problems. (Read More...)

Economic Doom: China Says That There Will NEVER Be A Trade Deal Until The U.S. Agrees To Their Demands

Unless someone backs down in a major way, this trade war is going to last for a very long time, and the Chinese have made it exceedingly clear that they are never going to back down on the core issues.  So that means that the only way out is for President Trump to back down, and with an election looming in 2020, his advisers are telling him that now is the time to be very tough with China.  Bernie Sanders and other top Democrats have staked out positions that are just as tough on China as Trump is being, and so if Trump backs down now he will be absolutely hammered by the other side for being weak.  But if investors become fully convinced that a protracted trade war is in our future, that could be enough to set off a new financial crisis and throw the global economy into a tailspin.  It definitely looked like we were headed for a major economic downturn anyway, and so this trade crisis could certainly be more than enough to push us over the edge. (Read More...)

How The Trade War Is Going To Affect You And Your Family

As expected, trade negotiations with China concluded on Friday with no trade deal in sight.  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called the negotiations “constructive”, and that helped calm the financial markets, but there really isn’t any reason to be optimistic at this point.  The negotiations that happened this week did not even come close to producing a deal, and neither side is attempting to claim that there will be an agreement in the near future.  Instead, it appears that moves are being made that could lead to a protracted trade war.  In fact, according to Bloomberg the Trump administration has just given the Chinese another ominous deadline… (Read More...)

The Deadline Passes And Trump Brings Down The Tariff Hammer – China Immediately Promises To Retaliate

At 12:01 AM eastern time on Friday, President Trump followed through on his threats and hit China with a massive tariff increase.  As you will see below, China immediately pledged to retaliate.  U.S. and Chinese officials will continue to negotiate throughout the day on Friday, but if U.S. officials were optimistic that a deal was imminent the trigger never would have been pulled on these tariffs.  At this point the gap between the negotiating positions of the two sides is still enormous, and that does not seem likely to change.  The Chinese have been taking advantage of the United States for decades, and they wish to continue doing so.  Meanwhile, President Trump and his advisers are absolutely determined to level the playing field.  Unless one of the parties backs down in a major way, there is not going to be a trade agreement and this trade war is about to get very real, and that is extremely bad news for the global economy. (Read More...)

Trump Spooks Global Markets: China “Broke The Deal. They Can’t Do That, So They’ll Be Paying.”

It sure looks like nothing can stop the trade war now, and that could potentially be absolutely disastrous for the global economy.  The last major trade war began in 1930, and it turned an economic downturn into the Great Depression of the 1930s.  But without a doubt something needed to be done about China.  They have been lying, cheating and stealing our technology for a very long time, and previous administrations simply allowed them to walk all over us.  President Trump had hoped that a new trade agreement would put trade between our two nations on a fair and equitable course from now on, but at this point it appears that isn’t going to happen. (Read More...)

If The Stock Market Is Falling This Much Already, What Is Going To Happen If There Is No Trade Deal With China By Friday?

If negotiations between the Trump administration and the Chinese government do not produce a trade deal by Friday, it is going to be absolutely catastrophic for Wall Street.  On Tuesday, trade fears pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 473 points.  It was the second-worst trading day of 2019 so far, and at one point during the trading session the Dow had fallen as much as 648 points.  But most of the experts are assuring investors that a trade deal with China will be finalized before Trump’s new tariffs go into effect on Friday.  We are being told that the Chinese will almost certainly cave in on some of their most important demands and that Trump will get the favorable trade deal with China that he has been seeking. (Read More...)

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