...thought on the US trade war with China....

My friends, I have been a longtime Republican activist, having first voted for VP Gerald Ford for President in 1976.

I've since been an environmental science & energy advisor to GOP Congressmen, Senators, Governors and even Mayors, and was always active in politics. My last major role was advisor to former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. when he ran for President in 2012. (A very good, smart and honest man BTW).

Recently, I was chatting with some friends who also have been with the GOP....all of us ran away from the GOP when Trump became the candidate and then won as US President. We were analyzing the US trade war with China, and were flummoxed why the Administration was taking so many steps that would harm US farmers, costing many of them their farmland.

Suddenly, my friends and I realized that the trade war, at some level, MAY be a way to deprive US farmers of their land through bankruptcy! Mitt Romney, formerly of Bain Capital, was familiar with this "divide & conquer" approach to pry company assets from US owners and sell the production abroad, mostly to China.

Could our Administration be pursuing this trade war as a way to help hedge fund managers and others friendly to the administration (perhaps foreigners) to acquire increasingly valuable US farmland?

This trend has been ongoing for awhile....

Please read this article, "Why China Is Snatching Land from U.S. Farmers" By CASEY WILSON, Associate Editor, Money Morning • July 7, 2017 at this link.

https://moneymorning.com/2017/07/07/why-china-is-snatching-land-from-u-s-farmers/

I'm not prone to conspiracy theories, but considering some of the folks in our administration (Wilbur Ross, Steve Mnuchin etc.), I believe this is worth discussing. I know there is a variety of opinions on AFT, so I wanted to share this with you. Be safe, Chuck

https://news.yahoo.com/front-lines-trade-war-sinks-100451192.html?soc_src=community&soc_trk=fb

jacksdad wrote: Entirely possible, Chuck. There are a lot of people getting rich thanks to this administration, and I wouldn't put it past some of the people Trump surrounds himself with to pull a stunt like that. Wild swings on the stock market are money makers if you know how to use them, and when a couple of tweets can result in a 600-800 point drop, there's a lot of potential for someone to cash in. Buy low and sell high - works great if you have someone on your side (or running the show) that can cause the market to temporarily tank on command with a few well chosen online rants.

Thanks, JD! Great points!

When I see articles like this, I just have to wonder....


https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/13/farmers-hit-back-usda-chief-sonny-perdue-mocks-those-harmed-trump-trade-war-whiners

One area of concern in this trade war is how much a certain person's tweets about the trade war can affect the short term movement of shares.

This power to move the markets (in matters of minutes) raises the question of if there is any group that has prior knowledge of these tweets and and so is able to engage in "insider trading".

A possible argument against this is that the tweets are so much "stream of consciousness" (ie written as soon as the idea occurs) that there is no time to leak the details and so have people profit from it.