May 1, May Day next Monday is in fact a genuine Mayday! for dozens of modestly-sized dairy farmers in Wisconsin and elsewhere who could lose on that day their regular bulk milk buyer because Canada has begun to protect its home-country dairy business and is cutting back on US imports like those the Wisconsin farmers routinely provided.
Trump promised during his Kenosha visit last week that he and "Scott" [Walker] and "Paul" [Ryan] and presumably also Wisconsin-native and White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus who had a seat on Air Force 1 for the Wisconsin junket would hold some great #MAGA [Make America Great Again] meetings and get things straightened out:
This might have been moved along quicker if we had a US Ambassador to Canada on the job, or at least-partially staffed State Department, Trade Representative and US Department of Agriculture offices and experts in place, but as Trump told us during his nominating convention, he's the only one that can solve our problems so Wisconsin dairy farmers faced with sending their herds to slaughter May 2nd have to put their faith in our self-declared Maximum Leader.
And I'm not sure what "Scott's" leverage in all this actually is. The last time we heard Walker open his mouth about Canada it was during the Presidential campaign when he tried to out-trump Trump in the wall-building business by yammering on about putting one across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores.
This specific fight aside, I'd noted in a recent posting the contradiction about ramped-up milk production in Wisconsin for which there may be no market and Walker's plan to expand dairies and their output in Wisconsin:
I noted an interesting Canadian media piece based on interviews with Wisconsin dairy farmers which I recommend for perspective as May 1 looms and the bigger picture is getting clearer:
Trump promised during his Kenosha visit last week that he and "Scott" [Walker] and "Paul" [Ryan] and presumably also Wisconsin-native and White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus who had a seat on Air Force 1 for the Wisconsin junket would hold some great #MAGA [Make America Great Again] meetings and get things straightened out:
"We're going to get together and we're going to call Canada," Trump said. "And we're going to say, 'What happened?'But May 1 is getting awfully close and we see no signs that Canada has realized its mistake and wants to get back in line so our purported Great Deal maker-in-Chief can have the kind of NAFTA he wants without Canada getting in the way or receiving anything in return.
This might have been moved along quicker if we had a US Ambassador to Canada on the job, or at least-partially staffed State Department, Trade Representative and US Department of Agriculture offices and experts in place, but as Trump told us during his nominating convention, he's the only one that can solve our problems so Wisconsin dairy farmers faced with sending their herds to slaughter May 2nd have to put their faith in our self-declared Maximum Leader.
And I'm not sure what "Scott's" leverage in all this actually is. The last time we heard Walker open his mouth about Canada it was during the Presidential campaign when he tried to out-trump Trump in the wall-building business by yammering on about putting one across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific shores.
This specific fight aside, I'd noted in a recent posting the contradiction about ramped-up milk production in Wisconsin for which there may be no market and Walker's plan to expand dairies and their output in Wisconsin:
Walker in 2012 began financing a state plan to boost milk production in the state:
Walker hopes to grow Badger State milk production to 30 billion pounds annually by 2020. The effort to do that has been dubbed "30x20" and is part of the Grow Wisconsin Dairy program.
Walker unveiled his proposal in Madison on March 13. He chose the twentieth annual business conference of the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin (PDPW) for his announcement.That plan, of course, principally which benefits his friends in Big Dairy and the environmentally-damaging/pollution-producing/ground-water-sucking/industrial-scale mega feedlots they operate.
I noted an interesting Canadian media piece based on interviews with Wisconsin dairy farmers which I recommend for perspective as May 1 looms and the bigger picture is getting clearer:
'We don't blame you': Wisconsin farmers on Trump's blast at Canada's dairy industry
With a state-wide oversupply of milk, the dairy industry's problems go well beyond a little trade spat