Sunday Cutdown XLV (6 October 2024)
Clearing my inbox of stories I want to document
1) Another farm bites the dust
FARMDOC DAILY: Trade Policy Shifts and Their Potential Implications for U.S. Agricultural Exports
STAR TRIBUNE: If a trade war comes, U.S. agriculture might be ‘on the losing side’
From the academic report:
Protectionist policies are once again threatening to reshape agricultural trade, as the U.S. administration escalated tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EV) in May 2024, echoing the actions of its predecessor. Presidential hopefuls have taken this a step further, advocating for increased tariffs on Chinese products and those from other countries. Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers are also considering revoking China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status—a move that has already been applied to countries like Cuba and North Korea. This action would trigger even higher tariffs on Chinese imports, escalating tensions further. These policy shifts are reminiscent of past actions that led to significant retaliatory measures from China and other countries, severely impacting U.S. agricultural exports. The agricultural sector, particularly commodities such as soybeans, corn, beef, and wheat, bore the brunt of this trade retaliation.
That is how you destroy one of America’s greatest advantages in this world: our ability to feed the rest of the planet. In a world facing ever more severe food insecurity, this is how we behave.
In a global economy, self-reliance is a short-term strength that yields long-term weakness — primarily because you shut yourself off from global competition and technology.
[As a side note here: It was virtually bone-head comedy to listen to JD Vance in the veep debate declare that America’s best path forward on climate change was to bring all manufacturing back home to America — the “cleanest” economy in the world!
Duh!
How does he think we cleaned up America in the first place? By moving up or down the production ladder?]
How do farmers vote for Trump? Honest to God, I just don’t know:
The soybean industry sets a noteworthy example, as it relies heavily on the Chinese market. Reduced demand from China [during Trump’s trade war] led to lower export prices and increased competition from other countries, most notably Brazil. The consequences were severe, with many U.S. farmers facing significant financial losses. The potential for a repeat of these events is now a primary concern for the U.S. agricultural sector. As new trade policies are proposed, the risk of further retaliatory tariffs looms large, threatening to disrupt markets again and cause substantial economic harm to U.S. agriculture.
The scenarios examined (something I always like):
These are the projected losses, emphasizing Trump’s 60% tariff threat in the lowest red line.
These are the states that would suffer the most harm in that 60% worst-case tariff imposition:
How many of those affected states will vote for Trump? Between the promised tariffs and the threatened deportation of immigrant farm laborers, one has to wonder.
2) The long tail of a hurricane
WAPO: Hurricanes’ hidden toll: Thousands of deaths years after they strike
NATURE: Mortality caused by tropical cyclones in the United States
We are just beginning to calculate the true costs imposed by climate change.
As the WAPO summarizes the study:
An analysis of more than 500 tropical cyclones that have hit the United States since 1930 found that the average hurricane leads to as many as 11,000 excess deaths — a figure hundreds of times higher than official mortality estimates. By combining weather records with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality data from months before and after the storms struck, the study’s authors revealed how death rates in affected states remain elevated for 15 years after a storm makes landfall.
The goal of the study, per the authors, was to more broadly frame the impact — across domains and across time. I love it!
Despite attracting widespread cultural, scientific and policy attention, the full impacts of natural disasters on society are not well understood. In particular, effects on human health are challenging to disentangle from numerous other factors that also influence health outcomes, such as behaviour, healthcare systems and pollution. Because of this complexity, many approaches to measuring the mortality impact of disasters focus narrowly on enumerating cases where a disaster is the most immediate and obvious direct cause of death, such as drownings in flood waters. Yet it has been widely hypothesized that tracking only these ‘direct deaths’ might misrepresent the total mortality that results from disasters, since disasters trigger complex cascades of events that ultimately may cause additional future mortality. To our knowledge, this full excess mortality effect has never been characterized for any class of disaster at population scale, accounting for deaths that may be delayed relative to the physical disaster but are nonetheless traceable to those events. By extension, the full health burden of environments that are chronically disaster-prone also remains poorly understood.
Oftentimes, the “new normal” is a big reduction in resilience:
The idea that storms cause a long-term spike in death rates comes as no surprise to W. Craig Fugate, a Florida native and veteran of too many hurricanes to count. In more than a decade leading Florida’s emergency management division and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Fugate has seen how “the trauma is not over when you’re finished rebuilding.”
Fugate said he has observed firsthand how suicide rates increase after a disaster destroys livelihoods. City and state budgets get reorganized to pay for infrastructure repairs, leaving less money for school food programs and prenatal health clinics. Formerly close-knit communities become fractured, leaving vulnerable people with no one to care for them in times of crisis.
“It’s about time somebody put a study together,” Fugate said.
We need to apply this sort of broad framing to climate change in general.
You know, observers always say the same thing about a place after some weather disaster hits: It looks like a war zone.
Well, wars create huge wakes, and so will climate change. Maybe when enough of my Middle Earth (30 degrees north and south of the equator) looks like a war zone, we’ll start to mentally move past viewing warfare as humanity’s primary existential threat.
3) The foreign assassination threat
WAPO: Trump courts disaster by underestimating Iranian death threats
David Ignatius raises a wild scenario, and, while I get the need to raise it amidst Trump’s return to Butler PA, the reference to Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination triggering WWI seems like an unnecessary stretch.
It’s hard to judge the seriousness of Iran’s purported recent effort to target Trump and/or others in the US as payback for his ordering the targeted killing of Iranian leader Qasem Soleimani. As a move, it would be completely out of character for the regime, which has always displayed a keen sense of what it can and cannot get away with in its sponsorship of terrorism beyond its shores.
Still, few things would reset the game board like taking out Trump just before the election, so nobody wants to be seen as taking the threat lightly.
But, let’s run the scenario out and see where it would logically go.
Say Iran succeeds. Would it dare take credit? Why even risk attribution?
Tehran would have to know that Biden would be forced to respond big-time, at the very least bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities into the last century and probably including vigorous strikes meant to topple the regime. Anything less would simply invite too much domestic instability (to include the frightening scenario of political neophyte JD Vance being vaulted into the presidency, although it’s really hard to think through any such impact on a suddenly altered election).
But, that’s my point: for Iran, it would just invite such huge risk and uncertainty right when the regime is facing plenty with Israel. Given the US response on 9/11 (not just Afghanistan but extending into Iraq), any reasonable calculation would have to assume a regime-toppling effort by the US that would not stop short of anything less than the installation of a post-Islamic republic leadership.
As far as the regime is concerned, that’s the equivalent of a nuclear strike, meaning existential.
Now, killing former Trump national security adviser John Bolton? That I could see but obviously would not welcome, because, even there, you can never be quite sure what the Biden administration might spot as an opportunity amidst what Israel seems intent on doing anyway. This is not the time to hand hot-headed America a hunting license.
Still, as a wild card scenario … hard to beat for unleashing uncontrollable responses. It’s just hard seeing Tehran viewing that as its best option.
4) Silence of the geese
SPRINGFIELD NEWS-SUN: Man guilty of killing geese near Springfield on day of Trump-Harris debate
Finally, some proof!
Except it turns out to be some middle-aged, shotgun-wielding White guy looking to rid a golf course of a troublesome goose.
Sounds like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, am I right?
Pretty, pretty, pretty … pretty good!
5) The “wider regional war” scenario involving China
NYT: China Buys Nearly All of Iran’s Oil Exports, but Has Options if Israel Attacks
Iran clearly depends on China for export earnings, but that’s not a two-way dependency.
Made ya squint!
It’s important to keep things in perspective. Beijing isn’t stupid enough to tether its economic stability to Iran’s ongoing beef with Israel.
This imbalance is the nature of China’s power in this world.
Remember: Supply is global, demand is local.
China is happy to buy sanctioned Iran’s oil at bargain basement prices, but oil accounts for only 20% of China’s total energy use and Iran accounts for only 15% of China’s oil imports. Take Iran out of the equation for some period of time and China must scramble to replace that source — but that’s it, scramble. Not lose its mind or go to war distant from its shore.
Scenarios that see China pulled into a “wider regional war” in the PG because the US and Israel take the fight directly to Iran?
Just ain’t happening. Just not realistic.
6) Helene’s economic hit is far worse than just the initial damage
WAPO: Thousands of uninsured homes were in Helene’s path
The brutal truth of what will be a very long tail of impact:
On average, just a tiny fraction of households in the inland counties hit hardest by Hurricane Helene and its remnants had flood insurance, according to a Washington Post analysis of recent data from the National Flood Insurance Program. Across seven affected states, only 0.8 percent of homes in inland counties affected by the storm had flood insurance. By contrast, 21 percent of homes in coastal counties in those areas had coverage.
Climate change has jumped the coast.
7) Not ours to lose, duh!
ECONOMIST: America is losing South-East Asia to China
The West’s enduring arrogance here is striking: Southeast Asia is America’s to lose! Apparently, just like we “lost” China to the communist bloc all those decades ago.
Would that we ever had such power.
Demographics drives this reality:
Southeast Asia is now in the throes of its demographic dividend. China, having processed its own, is now forced to direct lower-end manufacturing to SE Asian states as it seeks to move up the production ladder to higher-end goods (remembering that China is still exporting a lot of cheap goods in a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too push).
Economic logic is driving this relationship, and nothing America can do will alter it.
Just wait for the headlines declaring that the West has “lost India to China!”
Broad-framing this reality keeps it real.
8) Imperial overreach comes in all sizes
BUSINESS INSIDER: War with Ukraine is the only thing preventing Russia from entering an immediate recession, economists say
PROJECT SYNDICATE: The Russian War Economy’s Days Are Numbered
The evidence is building that Russia’s descent into economic failure is really a one-way street so long as its war with Ukraine continues.
And yet, Russia’s war with Ukraine now is the only thing keeping its economy alive.
That is a Russian version of Catch-22.
Anders Åslund is the dean of Western economic experts on China. He’s been doing it for decades.
The harsh judgment:
With Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine approaching its third anniversary, the financial, technological, and demographic hurdles facing the Russian economy are more severe than is commonly understood. Contrary to what the Kremlin would like others to believe, time is not on Russia’s side.
More specifically:
Regardless of the outcome on the battlefield, Russia will be the biggest loser. Wars are costly, and the Russian economy has grown by only 1% per year, on average, since it illegally seized Ukrainian territory in 2014. Russian GDP has slumped from $2.3 trillion in 2013 to $1.9 trillion in current dollars. No longer a superpower, Russia is what the late US Senator John McCain memorably called “a gas station masquerading as a country.” In fact, its unreliability has reduced its credibility as an energy supplier. The only sectors of the Russian economy that are growing are the military and related infrastructure, where state-owned companies sell to the state at (probably inflated) administered prices. The rest of the economy is flat at best.
The only “chaos” Russia is generating with this war is a delayed-fuse destruction of its own economy.
Apres moi, le deluge!
Anders estimates that the war costs Ukraine about $50B/year with another $50B from the West versus almost $200B/year for the Russians.
Everybody is screwing Russia on this deal. The Indians and Chinese buy its oil super cheap (often reselling at a profit) and the West is bargain-basement-ing the war ($50B v $200B).
Yes, yes. Putin is a genius!
9) The climate haven dream
WAPO: Before the floods, Asheville was called a ‘climate haven.’ Is anywhere safe?
Climate change is altering how our world processes water, essentially dehumidifying Earth’s surface while radically humidifying Earth’s atmosphere:
It is a law of physics that, for every degree Celsius increase in temperature, air is able to hold 7 percent more water vapor. This phenomenon increases the moisture available for storms, making individual events wetter than they otherwise would be and increasing the risk of unprecedented rain.
Hurricane used to pound the coast and then drench inland. Now they seem to pound inland too, mostly by super-drenching.
Helene did a job on south-central Ohio. I mean, a lot of damage all that way in from the coast. Kind of amazing to witness.
10) An older America facing fiercer storms
NYT: Fleeing Climate Disasters Are Going to Transform the American South
H/T Jeff Itell.
The gist:
Helene was just the latest in a new generation of storms that are intensifying faster, and dumping more rainfall, as the climate warms. It is also precisely the kind of event that is expected to drive more Americans to relocate as climate change gets worse and the costs of disaster recovery increase.
Researchers now estimate tens of millions of Americans may ultimately move away from extreme heat and drought, storms and wildfires. While many Americans are still moving into areas considered high risk, lured by air-conditioning and sunny weather, the economic and physical vulnerabilities they face are becoming more apparent.
The microcosm of climate change: my Middle Earth (30 degrees north and south of the equator) suffers, while the New North benefits.
Same thing will happen within the US.
Point of this article: guess who gets left behind (just like in this piece I wrote about Tunisia)?
The very old and the very poor get left behind, that’s who.
Then what happens as the young and rich leave? Tax base shrinks.
Again, this is a microcosm of what I am predicting across Middle Earth, leading to mass poleward migration. We’re just seeing how that “seam” along our southern border (roughly 30 degrees north) will reflect far worse down under.
11) Antarctica’s coming-out-from-under party
CNN: Scientists looked at images from space to see how fast Antarctica is turning green. Here’s what they found
Antarctica used to be a rainforest. Millions of years ago, but no kidding.
Now, with climate change, we’re beginning to see the continent underneath all that melting ice emerge once again.
This is how America has recast the planet by spreading US-style globalization across the planet, triggering the Great Acceleration of human consumption and activity.
Absolutely amazing.
12) Look south, young man!
THE HILL: The US needs a different perspective on Latin America
We need to try a little bit harder:
To ensure the intraregional trade flows that American prosperity relies on, the U.S. must prioritize partners in the region and provide them with a broader, attractive and fruitful relationship, considering the convergence of interests with each country. Building a more tangible political partnership by prioritizing the network of the 10 existing trade agreements with Latin American democracies would be the right path to face current challenges in the short term.
Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?
Except it’s China that paving paradise.
Although Washington’s political willingness for free trade and long-term commitments has diminished due to global political volatility, the fact is that Latin America is the region with the second-most trade flows from the U.S. (after Asia), with over $517 billion in 2023. The complex political and social challenges in Latin America are undeniable, but so is the region’s economic and security relevance.
You want access to a South-centric majority global middle class?
Twenty-eight countries in the region are now considered middle-income and are capable of contributing their own resources to address current challenges and shared priorities. While this does not completely reduce the need for assistance from the U.S. — which is valuable in terms of capacity building, technology and other resources derived from its soft power — the starting point for a new chapter in the U.S. relationship with the Americas depends on U.S. political will. Yet the continuous lack of attention being given to Latin America in the context of the 21st century is not encouraging.
The piece was by Peru’s ambassador to the US.
Anybody in DC listening?
Doubt it.
