Used to post a lot about nine-buck beans. Nine bucks was the floor for many years. Since '07...before that nine buck beans was a relative top with short lived spurts to 10.5(making seven point five beans a catch, now).

Comes Trump and his tariffs. I hear all manner of pro and cons and haven't made up my mind which is true. Maybe this is one of those instances where there's good and bad all rolled up together.

Here's what I see. In retaliation to China tariffs, China has socked it to the grains...in particular beans.

Here's some math. You got a relatively fixed number of bushels of beans, "x" servicing a relatively fixed number of peeps in this country, "y". You have a lot of beans per person...price stays reasonable. You introduce trade in beans...like say...lets sell our x number of beans to china and the rest of the world, too. All of a sudden you got way more "y" to the relatively fixed number of beans "x". Demand now surpasses supply and price goes up.

Now that China has attacked beans and the demand from China will decrease...you end up with more supply to fewer peeps. Price goes down.

Can't say as I dislike that. May be not so good for the farmer...survivable...but not plush...but I like the idea of cheaper beans. Cheaper other grains, too, equals cheaper feed...equals lesser price to feed livestock...equals lowering price of food at my grocery store. Can't say as I dislike that, either.

We do the same when we export moo's and oinks. We go from feeding the US to feeding the world and we go from equal-ish demand/supply to way more demand with same supply...prices go up.

I don't like to think of myself as wanting to do away with trade but I also can't say that it's going to break my heart if the rest of the world aint scarfin off my dinner plate.

I think?