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Wiesemeyer's Perspectives | Corn Falls, Exports Rise, Nerves Tighten

• Tommy Grisafi

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We break down a light-cut USDA report, the surprise weight from “fringe” state yields, and why corn fell while soybeans slipped despite modest changes. We connect Brazil’s growing edge, cotton’s production jump, and lender warnings to policy pivots on tariffs and trade aid.

• Corn production trimmed, carryout still higher
• Fringe states offset I‑state cuts in corn
• Soybean exports ceded to Brazil and Argentina
• CONAB vs USDA gaps on Brazil output
• Cotton yield gains in Texas pressure prices
• Daily sales resume with big Mexico corn buy
• No repeat of a Great Grain Robbery scenario
• Lenders see rising credit stress and equity burn
• Cattle cycle tightness and policy signals
• Rates near 4 percent keep financing costly
• Tariff pivot on non‑produced imports eases inflation
• Trade aid likely, size and timing adjusted




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Thank you, Tommy G


SPEAKER_00:

Happy Friday, everyone. Tom Gersapi. Eggbull Media, Egg Bull Trading. The government's open. The USDA, I don't know what they released, a bomb of sorts, and we got just the guy to break it all down. Hope you have a little time to spend with us. Let's bring him in the show with a proper introduction. You traveled a little bit this week, my friend.

SPEAKER_02:

I traveled a lot. Charlotte, North Carolina, for a real good fertilizer institute meeting, and then five almost a five-hour delay getting back. And then I had to fly to St. Louis and then drive down to Columbia, Missouri for the Missouri Governor's Conference, which I always like to do because uh, little secret, they have the best food buffet of any meeting I go to. They have they have steak, they have chicken, they have turkey, lamb, pork. I mean, you name it, and I had it all.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's uh bring that microphone a little closer to your beautiful lips. Oh, make love to the microphone, Mr. Weeshmayer. There you go. All right, like a famous disc jackey that you are. Let's start spinning records. And where do you suggest we start?

SPEAKER_02:

I would suggest that we start with the USDA crop production report. Yeah, there we go. You know, the farm media tried to kill that corn crop, but they didn't succeed.

SPEAKER_00:

What do you say by that?

SPEAKER_02:

That's our yeah, it's down what? It's only 64 uh 62 million bushels, I think, in corn, and uh soybeans wasn't down that much either. You saw the uh price reaction. I think we have the price reaction for corn. Uh yeah, yeah. Yeah, they didn't like it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a daily chart, folks, and we have a uh some moving averages there. I believe we have the uh 100 day and 200 day, but big down bar today in corn, one of the bigger down days we've had in a while, Mr. Weesmayer.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, that's they leaned into that report on the bull side, and they'd you know the old line, the bull needs to eat every day, and they didn't eat today.

SPEAKER_00:

Not even a little bit, no, sir. All right, let's hop right into this one.

SPEAKER_02:

You got some young those were the highlights that that we've got corn production, just you know, actually, they have a larger beginning stocks from from old crop last year, so production is forecast at 16.8 billion bushels. That's down just 62 million from September. Heck, we we lose that going to an elevator in uh over the harvest season, so that's not much of a reduction. Total use is up a hundred million bushels. That's uh that reflects that higher export forecast. We have record corn exports, so we don't have a trade issue with corn. We do with a great thing, yeah. And and the bottom line is uh supply is rising more than use, and whenever you have carryover going up, you're not in a bull market.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, time will tell. We still have to get through some South American weather.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, there's uh we have a graphic showing the November horn average yield in production, but we just went through that. But let's go to the next one because I can, yeah, look at the the the uh traders and analysts and general farm media, as usual, focused on the i states. Well, they got the reductions that they hyped up, but look at the so-called fringe states who are no longer fringe states. They more than more than made up for the almost more than made up for the downturn in the i states. Uh, that's my bottom line there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Uh South look at South Dakota.

SPEAKER_00:

Dakota a little creeper, yeah. Yeah. All right, moving along, soybeans, sir.

SPEAKER_02:

Look at that price. We've had a pretty good rally, but now with lack of follow-through China sales and that now that crop just went down a little bit, but it's just they they hammered it again today.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, let's break out those numbers very specific.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, there's the there's the uh yield and uh in a few states, but let's go to the next chart because that shows it by by state.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Again, we didn't see really much change from September. Remember, they didn't do an October, although they put in some uh some information from October, but I think you have to look at the the test weights and things like that from the November, but you can see the increases in some states and decreases for others. It wasn't that much of a change from the September soybean yield.

SPEAKER_00:

So here's the facts on it right here. Yeah, here's your uh verbage on it.

SPEAKER_02:

Down only 48 million bushels, the uh yield uh was down only half a bushel, half a bushel an acre, and supplies are projected to be 61 million bushels lower than September, and exports were down six were down 50 million bushels from the previous forecast. Now, this is important to point out USDA said that was due to lower supplies and higher exports by Brazil and Argentina. In September, you'll recall Argentina temporarily reduced their export taxes. That led to an influx of export registrations US during the peak US export season. And since the last report of WASDI, the the US entered a trade deal with China, which USDA says which led to higher US prices, but narrowed the price spread between the US and other countries in competing with other destinations other than China. So that that was the conundrum there for soybeans. We got priced too high too soon, and uh those Argent when when we uh gave that Argentina 20 billion dollars, they immediately sold China what seven billion dollars?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, two, three days. Yeah, when they turned on the I want to pop my face in here. Oh, congrats on the blue shirt Friday, you and I we got that uh memo. Uh yeah, remember how upset the American farmer was? They're like, holy cow, you trash our market, yeah, and you go to Argentina and you give them this money, they flip off the grains on sale light, they sell it all in three days, like Kmart had a special, and then all of a sudden, yeah, um crazy times. Hey, you brought some verbiage to back that up. You got the Brazil stuff here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the Brazil is going to be close to watch now because they're the formidable, they're the supermarket to the world. We're we no longer are that, by the way. USDA expects Brazil farmers will produce 175 million metric tons in their new crop, 2526. That's up from 171.5 million tons last year, but yesterday, CONAB, which is the equivalent of USDA in Brazil, Tommy, they said their farmers would produce 107 almost 178 million tons for the new crop year. So they're already ahead of USDA on soybeans. But look at the corn. USDA went up from 135 to 136 million tons old crop for Brazil. Conab has taken it all the way to uh call it 141 million tons. Look at that, 5 million tons more than USDA. Then on new crop, USDA calls Brazil farmer, said Brazil will only produce 131 million tons, and conab is at uh almost 139 for 25-26. So I don't know what what why USDA is doing what they're doing. They usually get serious on Brazil until February of the new year. So it may take them a while to catch up. But uh that means we could have some negative news from Brazil over the next few months with their production if if it's verified, Tommy. But in the case of Brazil, they used to be a seasonal competitor to us, but now they're producing so many soybeans that now they're a formidable competitor through most of our year. And and that's what got that's what has the soybeans in the in the doldrums right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Going back to the USDA, you ever see those mims where a farmer says, I think I'm gonna ask the USDA to be a pallbearer because I want them to be the last to let me down?

SPEAKER_01:

Again, to let them down again. Yep, they're there, it's fun. And they're gonna go, they they lived in green and they're gonna die in green.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, that's that just shows the passion for the American farmer that they love their green paint. Big shout out to John Deere out there. All right, we got daily export sales coming out. Back to the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we we didn't get any X daily export sales while the government was shut down what 43 days. But now that they're back, uh USDA released all the daily sales that would have been announced. And uh for the for those people viewing this, I yellowed out certain things. Uh, China, we didn't get that many confirmed daily soybean sales to China, but yet there's a few undone destinations in there uh for both corn and soybeans that could uh could uh potentially translate to China later on. But look at the big corn sale to Mexico. That was that's the biggest one out of all the time USDA was out, it was over a million tons on a daily sale, Tommy. So corn's uh still very export competitive there, and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and just to go, let's go full-blown conspiracy wacko theory. There was a bunch of jokers out there, and they they could have been right, they weren't they weren't wrong to think it, but it didn't happen. And the conspiracy theory was that while we were close for 45-50 days, we were gonna have the great grain robbery. You're old enough to remember that that happened in 72. I was born in 72, it actually happened in June of 72. The actual week I was born, you might have been a couple years old, but I think you've heard about it or read about it. That did not happen by looking at this list. Mexico bought a healthy amount of corn, but there was no great grain robbery. Is that correct, Mr. Weesmire?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, and I reported on it at the time I was here.

SPEAKER_00:

We're going through the show pretty quick. Tell people about it. But it's important to understand history, sir.

SPEAKER_02:

That's actually because let's connect dots here. That's why we have a daily export sales reporting system. Oh, yeah, that was Congress had hearings after the great American grain robbery, and what came out of that is the export daily sales reporting system. I think it came out the following year, but that's why we started it so we could track it. So, yeah, absolutely. We have a mechanism, and I think probably somebody was looking at those daily sales within USDA. So if there would have been something awry, they would have you know said something about it. Very, very interesting. I can't confirm that, but that's probably the case.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, should we talk about the fabric of our life?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, yes, cotton, cotton, yes. Look at this. That was negative for cotton because they increased production almost 900,000 bales. And boy, we were low priced to begin with. I think it was around 62 cents the last time I checked.

SPEAKER_00:

62, 65 indeed's cotton around there, lower 60s here for a long time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, what did we know what a closed today?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, just down 50, which isn't that much. I mean, it was up before, but uh would you like this this chart real quick?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that shows the acreage yield in production, and look at the big increase, it just shows the yield. You know, you don't have to go much yield in Texas, you know, go to the next one by six. Oh, yes, sir, because you can see Texas, that's where blue means more yield, correct? For uh the darker the blue, the more the yield increase. But if you've got any blue in Texas, that's your big cotton-producing state, you're gonna go uh uh up up in the U.S. average total, and that's exactly what happened. See, this is why corn, I mean, cotton, rice, and sorghum or milo really haven't seen the price acceleration that we've seen in corn and soybeans. So even though we've had the run-up in soybeans, we'll get to this later on, Tommy. But a lot of people think, oh, well, will there even be a trade aid program now that soybeans have uh uh have have uh increased? Absolutely, you will, but they may not get as much as before, but I'll guarantee you cotton, rice, and sorghum will because they haven't generated the price rise that the other two you're talking about this trade mitigation aid programming aid program, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's coming up that in a little bit.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, we will later on because there's a reason it may it will not likely be announced this week.

SPEAKER_00:

Should we talk about this what this ABA Farmer Mac survey? I understand you got a bunch of clips from this.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I hate it came out uh Wednesday or Thursday. ABA folks means American Bankers Association and Farmer Mac survey. And you know, I you know, I don't like negative news, but this shows what's the dynamics, negative dynamics going on in the business of agriculture. And let's look at a few. Only 52 percent of producers expected to be profitable next year. That's the lowest in five years. Row crop margins are squeezed by oversupply, wheat exports, and high import input cost. Most farmers know that, but now the world does. Many operations now are burning equity to cover annual expenses. And I hear and see that everywhere I go, Tommy. Next one.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't like that. I don't like that at all. Here we go.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh lenders are concerned about grain and cotton growers. Their concern jumped to around 70%. That's up from just 15% two years ago. So the high anxiety is increasing. The pressures include uh flat to lower commodity prices as we uh go into the latter part of 2025 and into 2026. Higher interest costs are eroding those profit margins, operating margins, I should say, and elevated land, cash rents, and fuel expenses. I mean, those are all the reasons why I know a farmer understands that, but this is what Congress needs to know.

SPEAKER_00:

This one stings a little bit today.

SPEAKER_02:

The well, the livestock has been mostly a uh uh the bright spot. Stronger domestic demand and farm and firm beef and dairy prices usually have supported profitability in those sectors. Uh, we know tight cattle supplies and protein sectors are more resilient, and that's what the numbers show. The widespread expectation of rising credit stress, especially for leveraged grain farms. Uh, I think the biggest thing in this coming aid package will be farmers paying down debt, Tommy. Okay, I really do. That's what I think.

SPEAKER_00:

They're not going to buy new green paint on this one.

SPEAKER_02:

No, no. You're gonna see continued uh uh tempered uh sales in the farm equipment industry for sure. I don't even have to do any survey for that one. And then uh there are concerns for 2025 and going into 2026, persistent low crop prices, rising costs, high interest rates, refinancing pressure, volatile land values, uncertain cash rents, strained working capital, and liquidity and weak grain export demand, other than corn. Now, I don't like to say those things, but I'll tell you, Tommy, here's my biggest concern now is that if we if we were to make new lows and and we don't have much of a bounce in into 2026, that's why you're gonna have this bridge aid, not only from the trade mitigation program, but from Congress. If you start tilting the land market, you're gonna have more than a few farmers sell a portion of land just to get by. And that's where you could cascade uh land prices more than anyone thinks right now. I saw that translate into the 1980s, and I'm not predicting it. I hope it doesn't happen, but it could.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, real quick note on interest rates. The tenure yield, everyone keeps saying interest rates are coming down, coming down, coming down. We had a big stock market go down this week. We have things like Bitcoin traded 95,000, big vicious moves in both gold and silver. Silver hit all-time highs and sold off. But the tenure yield just the other day, 4.15. It has been around 4% for the last six months, regardless of what the Fed does. If you don't understand that, call or email us, we'll explain to you more. But the Fed could lower the short end all they want, but the long end has a mind of its own.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that says that there was a several Federal Reserve governors or people on the Federal Open Market Committee got hawkish, as we say, signaling that they don't think we should cut uh interest rates in their early December meeting at the Federal Reserve. And that that hit the that hit the stock market and it affected the bond market as well. That's why you had almost 800 points down yesterday. I didn't look today.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh it was bad. No, it was this morning. Then it came back. Then it came back. So if that's why, you know, if you're a long-term investor, you just don't look at this stuff. No, just take a minute for uh station identification. If you'd like Mr. Weismeyer's newsletters, he is popping them out several a day. He traveled a lot this week, but boy, has he been on fire. Weismeyer at gmail.com, the one and only Mr. Jim Wiesmeyer. You can find him here, Weissmeyer's Perspectives on the Agble Podcast on Spotify, Apple, all the yummies, YouTube, of course. Now, with that, with that, folks, if you go to the you if you go to the Agble website, as fast as he's putting out stories, my brother Joe and myself, we're posting them. Now, Mr. Weissmeyer, he's a generous man. He gives us stuff out for free. Why? I have no idea. But all the content I produce, I'm starting to lock down. If you like what AgBull Media is doing, subscribe there.$25 a month,$250 annually, www.agbull.com. Thank you to all the new subscribers this week. We appreciate it. We're grateful. We believe you will get your money's worth.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, with that, Tommy, let me give you a plug, Tommy, myself. Because I'm asked all the time. Well, when I go out to uh give my speeches, which I do a lot, people who know me say, Hey, why did you hook up quotes with Tommy? And I said, He's a he's a good trader, T-R-A-D-E-R, and I like a person who knows markets because it's a kind of a uh a joint project between somebody who knows markets and policy and how they connect sometimes, and that's why we chose each other, actually.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, thank you, thank you. Thank you. The markets are moving. I have to say I'm having fun as a trader, as a broker, priority number one to my clients, but I like to trade. And boy, I made a few mistakes this week. I'm embarrassed to even tell you about, but uh wrote it down in my journal. I gotta tell you, folks, when you have money into something and they give you a chance to take your profit, take it. Because when the market turns, whether it be feeder cattle or the stock market or gold or silver, when the market's just bid, bid, bid, and you're long something, go ahead. It's okay to pepper and get out. Because when the market turns, you can't get out, and then that that becomes a problem because these algorithms and everything else, extremely powerful. You know, I'm just a little guy sitting in the basement trading against these NVIDIA computers and everything else. And the one thing I will say that you I'm just loving is the amount of information that President Trump and the White House and this USDA put out is amazing. And the access to I mean, our friend Don Wick did an interview with this guy this week. My God, he was so generous with his time. He spent it's a 12-minute interview, and Don went through all his questions, and he didn't, you know, it was just he got right to the point. That boy's got some opinions.

SPEAKER_02:

He's kind of Stephen Vane is one of the smarter people at USD, if not the smartest. And he's very articulate, a lawyer by training. He knows Washington, D.C., and he knows the issues, and he's passionate. So if you're passionate to me, that's that's number one. You have to love what you're doing, and he does.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I Googled him. He comes from a little town in Tennessee. He's he gets it. He gets it. I look forward to meeting him. I bet you we'll have him on this show here shortly. I know you can't.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I can get him on. I can get him on.

SPEAKER_00:

All righty. Well, now let's get to what everyone wants to talk about cattle. Where would you like to start in cattle, sir?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, let's show some uh charts. I think we have some charts on cattle.

SPEAKER_00:

Show people, case they don't know what we're talking about. How the West was one.

SPEAKER_02:

That's that's the how the West was won for sure. Then we have look at we the the the we have record prices because of the shrinking cattle herd. This is 101. Look at those prices for ground beef, six dollars. But there's a reason for that. We have the lowest herd since 1951, and what even our president doesn't understand is the cattle cycle. It's gonna take two years or more to build up those supplies, and when you start rebuilding, you're gonna have a tighter market until we get the the inventory up there, right? So I don't care whether you import more from Argentina or import more hamburger from Brazil, let the market work and work itself out. But they're they don't want to do that anytime in my history. I don't care whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, when an administration tries to deal with the market themselves, they followed up.

SPEAKER_00:

I want you to get a sip of water real quick because you you you sound like you need one, and I'm gonna pull up the chart. Okay, you take a little break.

SPEAKER_02:

There's a political one for that. You can explain it right there.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, this looks like that game where you used to put your dot your feet on the dots and twister. This looks like twister. And for you guys old enough to know, half the crowd's freaking laughing right now. Listen to this, but all right, you got red dots and you got blue dots. And the red dots, I believe, are the red states, and the blue dots happen to be the blue states. You know what I really notice here from top to bottom. I guess I never really thought about it, but look at Texas and just go all the way up to North Coast, straight up straight up, yeah. But then you go to your east coast and your west coast, that's where they always say they're a little wild over there. And tell me about the blue dot, red dot, and how it gets cattle, Jim.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's where, like you said, from Texas, which is the biggest circle there because of the cattle there, you go straight north, all the way up. And this is why politically, some farm state lawmakers are nervous to what Trump has been saying, that he wants lower cattle prices, because they know where the cattlemen are and how usually cattlemen vote, and they don't like what Trump has been saying about the cattle prices that he wants them lower. And so that's just that's just one-on-one. And and in the in the democratic states, uh they have some, but not nearly as many cattle. And this shows you the gap that that going back that no, that's all right. You can do the next one.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the state of New York, where the hell are you gonna put a cat on Manhattan, Jim?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00:

You got the people.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, yeah, you got that's for the restaurant industry, primarily, the cattle that they do have. Although northern New York, a beautiful country, by the way. Yeah, I have some clients up there actually. Yeah, yeah, beautiful, beautiful country.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, dairy, old dairy country that the dairy's going away, and they're just corn farmers now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, this chart, sir.

SPEAKER_02:

Here's your gap as far as the beef deficit, and but they they should know this because of the cattle cycle, and that's been caused by a period of years of drought, high input cost, and things like that. That's your cattle inventory. Again, it's we we keep saying it's the lowest since 1951. That equals a bull market if you have cattle, and it gets harder and harder to buy feeder cattle because you've got to have some of that gold in order to buy them.

SPEAKER_00:

So I want to take a little break for we'll walk our way through and just talk about this. But the USDA did something interesting this week, they posted something on their website on Thursday and it it made cattle go limit down. Credit to Brooke Rollins and them, they're working hard. But holy smokes, when they put out that thing about screw worm and the facility on the Mexico-American border, did you see the effect that had on the markets?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, but it didn't surprise me the market reaction. You noted you noted that I think last week we said our sources were telling us that they wanna they want to possibly partially reopen the US-Mexico border in January. And I think the traders who had heard that and other things, they figured, oh my goodness, now this is a U.S. uh fly area coming online. That will add to the odds that would increase the odds that they're going to announce a partial reopening of the border, that they'll go by certain states, maybe Arizona or New Mexico first, and certain states in Mexico. I will tell you, Tommy, that President Trump a few weeks ago, I've been told, told USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins he wanted that border opened. And I think uh she's uh probably told him, well, we want to make sure that we have action plans in place and further things that we want to do to guard against any screw worms coming into the United States, and I think that's the stage we're at. But it's not a question of if it's when, and more likely January.

SPEAKER_00:

Let me ask you a dumb question, and I'm being serious. I know you're gonna think I'm joking. But if you are an employee, any form of employee for the federal government, ultimately, is this your boss?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, he's number one, he's your boss. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

If Donald Trump wants the border open, we're gonna work on getting the border open. May not be the right thing to do, and he doesn't always do the right thing, but he does what we go back to his picture.

SPEAKER_02:

I wish I had I've got a picture that I can give you for next week. Okay, look at the top of his hair, it's a lot like the tassel corn, right? That's why he likes corn producers.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. I I wonder if he's listening. You said you said some folks in the White House are actually watching this video.

SPEAKER_01:

They do, they do, they do.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I guess hey, if you're in the White House, you're watching this video, you're more than welcome to come on the Eggbowl podcast. We could record something anytime you want. And uh with that, let's just look at folks in the White House. Look what you're doing to the cattle market. Our young assistant Lindsay was nice enough to pull up some charts, folks. These are daily charts live cattle. Big down move. We spiked up. Jim, we had a limit up move. When I talk about a mistake I made this week, I got a butt kicking on a limit up move. Folks, that's called a bear market rally. They're vicious, bear market rally.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, bear trap. A bull trap. Bull trap.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, bear. It's we're going straight down, but the rally back up, a short covering rally, is vicious. Happens in the stock market all the time.

SPEAKER_02:

They picked you off. Well, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place. All right, that's live cattle. Here's feeder cattle. Same thing, Jim. We have so many gaps to cover, but this is what everyone's gonna be talking about. See that hundred that uh red line? Yeah, that's the hundred-day moving average. See the blue line, folks. Yeah, that's the 200 day. We traded below the 200. I'm not quite sure. I'd I'm gonna go with that. We close real close to it. And one more chart that you might say, Tommy, Jim, why are you looking at live cattle, feeder cattle in the NASDAQ? Well, believe it or not, there's some major, major, major money flows. There's a talk of AI changing, blowing up. People got a little frothy in this, but who did we have some volatility in the stock market, my friend? Your 401k was it by 501k went back to 401k. 401 and a half right now. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02:

Although we we're not down that much for the week, actually.

SPEAKER_00:

That that's an interesting way of looking at it. You know how I always tell people, Jim, if you want to learn a little bit more about trading, don't look at the price of something changed. If if I remember at the Board of Trade when the Dow Jones, we had Dow Jones futures, they started at the board, whereas the Merck had the NASDAQ and the SP. We had Dow Jones 10,000 hats. If you are walking around telling someone the Dow had a bad day, it's down 500. You need your head examined. Yeah, it was down 1.2%. Talk in percents. Yeah, so when people say cattle had a horrible day, folks, they were down three percent. These are commodity markets, they're allowed to move that much. Copper this year had an up 22% move in one day and a down 24% move in one day. That's a move, folks. A one and a half percent move isn't as big of a deal. But the reason it matters is everyone of all ages, life savings, retirement, etc., is wrapped up. We're probably over-leveraged, Jim, in the stock market. We own too much stocks. We're not diversified enough. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, the most people are. I'm not. I'm I'm diversifying.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Well, if you like diversification, you're gonna get a chance to buy some Bitcoin here because it's on sale. That is not a recommendation. That is just a comment. But I do have something for you, Jim. A gift box of coffee is coming to your house. I'm tired of listening to complain about it on the internet. What's going on with it?

SPEAKER_02:

On the internet and my speeches, because that's where you know, you'll recall our president Trump in April when he came out with his initial trade plan. If he would have stuck with the original uh concept of uh reciprocity, reciprocal, like we're gonna treat you the way you treat us. That uh every it was easy to understand, it made logical sense. Then they started to get complex and increase uh tariffs on our allies, uh Canada and Mexico, beyond the USMCA agreement. They got into Brazil where we had a trade surplus and still and put a 50% tariff on Brazil, and they didn't differentiate. Any ag person should have told Trump, you know, if you do this, you're gonna have sticky food inflation because we get uh all of our coffee imported.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Now they did a waiver early on for orange juice, but not coffee. Why was that? I I don't know. But now they should, I don't know whether they're out officially, but they're gonna announce today, they meaning the Trump administration with U.S. trade rep Jameis and Greer, that they're uh taking off the tariffs for certain commodities that the U.S. doesn't produce. Well, that should have been to begin with, and I think it's their admission, they'll never admit it publicly, that tariffs are tax increases.

SPEAKER_00:

And I want to talk about that because I heard Chip Flory say something. He said he was saying that tariffs are a tax, it creates inflation, and then he he backed off, and then the government's now like, hey, we're gonna give you two thousand dollars because these tariffs, which chip is saying, and credit to him, that's just a give you the money back without turning over, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I don't know whether they'll get the two thousand, they can't announce that administratively, I don't think that has to come through Congress, and it's a hard thing to get anything through Congress, but it is an admission that tariffs, at least the way they worked on it after the increasing it beyond the uh you know reciprocal trade you know policy, absolutely it increased prices, and that's why you have sticky inflation, that's why you have uh uh lumber prices with the Canadian tariffs. You're gonna have higher housing prices, uh uh coffee, the fruits, uh bananas. We don't produce bananas, but yet they put those tariffs on.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, I'll tell you what we do produce in America some nuts. Have you read the blogs and the comments on some of this stuff? Oh, you should see these cattle people fighting amongst themselves. This group against that group. Real quick, I got a picture of that's Jamison Greer, the U.S.

SPEAKER_02:

trade rap. A good guy, knowledgeable guy, very aggressive on China. He helped write the first uh US-China phase one agreement. He wrote a lot of the language in the US Mexico-Canada agreement. He knows his stuff, but now he they're going, they're having to acknowledge, as we keep saying, you know, we've got to fine-tune this uh trade policy we have because it's starting to hurt Americans. Thank goodness they they they have the ability to admit uh a mistake, not overtly, but they're admitting it today.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm about to the end of the show, but I do want to go back and touch on this on your pop-up headlines. We had governments reopen. Yes, we are. Trust tariff pivot. Anything you want to add to that, Mr. Wees?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, yeah, I want to talk about the U.S. government reopening. Oh, well, the tariff, let's first start at the top.

SPEAKER_00:

U.S.

SPEAKER_02:

government reopens 43 days we were shut down. Now, most of the questions I'm getting, Tommy, is will they shut it down again? Because they only have a continuing resolution until January 30th, but not for USDA. The good news is that they approved a full fiscal year through next September USDA funding. That means we have all the food stamp funding that they need, all the WIC money. They put they replenish the Commodity Credit Corporation funding back to its$30 billion borrowing authority. So we won't have to worry about another shutdown if and when it happens. I don't think it will, but if it were to happen, USDA will still operate. Okay, that's a good thing. Now, what will happen to most of the agencies? I think they only had three appropriation bills in this legislation that passed both the uh House and the Senate, including USDA. That means nine. So I'm not going to predict how January 30th is going to go because December is going to be very important. We're going to watch how many bills, individual bills, the appropriation committees in both the House and Senate can get done before January 30th. That's when the latest continuing resolution goes through, you know, January 30th. Two, is that by mid-December, Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised the Democrats that he would bring up a vote on extending the COVID-related increases in Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. We're going to have to see how that goes and see what can happen. It'll be curious if the Republicans ever offer an alternative for health care reform. Trump wants to give actual uh uh those eligible for Obamacare payments that he wants to put a means test on, by the way, and he should, that he wants to give them a tax incentive or our a check so they can go into the private insurance money. He wants to take all that money, Tommy, billions of dollars, going to insurance companies in the uh in the uh uh Affordable Care Act, uh Obamacare. So we're gonna see that, how how it plays out in December. So, but the bottom line, I don't think neither political party wants to have another shutdown come January 30th. We learned again, this time it was the Democrats, the Republicans learned it before that. You do not shut down the government to get what you want from a policy perspective. It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work, and so the Democrats uh I think lost this battle, but other ones say, well, we're gonna see in December. So that's where I say on that. That uh most of the USDA offices are fully staffed now. They're coming back, they're coming back to work uh in physical offices at USDA South building, and your FSA offices and NRDS should be fully staffed, and we're gonna have that food stamp money totally out to those states by Monday, Secretary Rollins said the other day.

SPEAKER_00:

Very good. Okay, I didn't understand this pop-up Trump tariff pivot. What's that mean?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's the pivot. That's why they're acknowledging that they're coming out with different agreements with the Central and Latin America to remove some of those tariffs on those crops that we don't produce here, or for those farm products, I should say, that we don't produce here. That's a pivot.

SPEAKER_00:

Coffee, banana. We can't get in the coffee business, we can't get in the banana. Well enough said.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, again, a logical common sense person would have known that. So you look at all those smart people they have in there, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, who says he's got a soybean farm out in I think South Dakota, North Dakota, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, come on, have you ever font? Oh, he's got a lot of land, he's got a lot of land, and they asked him why didn't you sell that farm ground? I thought you had to liquidate your assets, and you know what he said was it was a beautiful quote. Oh, I liquidated my stock portfolio, but I didn't have time to liquidate my land before I became nor should he. It's a great asset. The man uh has every right to own land, and yes, God bless him. I I love him. Is he gonna be our next Fed governor? No, he won't.

SPEAKER_02:

He doesn't want the Fed. It's down to about four or five people. One of the possibilities is uh uh the National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett. The other one, I think who will be, I forget Ken Walsh, W-A-R-S-H. Look him up. I think he's gonna be the next Fed chairman.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll talk about it next week and we'll do a round robin uh see what the Betty's. Our clients, our listeners, fans of Weissmeier, are Trump bucks still coming? What's going on?

SPEAKER_02:

They're still coming, but you saw, remember just a few weeks ago, uh USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said, just as soon as the government opens up, we're gonna announce the trade mitigation aid trade aid program. And so did Senate Senator John Holman from North Dakota. Well, I don't think it's coming out today. Now, why is that? Well, I think they wanted to look at the USDA report today, they have it now to see how it would affect prices, to see how they factored in those potential China sales. I think they they were offset, as USDA said, by decreased soybean exports to other nations. And I think the White House played a role saying, well, wait a minute, we maybe Trump wants to be part of that coming announcement. And so that means they have to have the right logistics in place, or maybe Secretary Rollins wants to announce it as uh at a specific uh speech in in a in a in a state where she wants to. So, but it's coming. We're not going to we're going to have a trade aid program, but it's probably going to change as a result of the recent run-up in prices for some commodities, corn and soybeans. But that doesn't mean farmers don't need it because of the numbers. Let's connect dots, Tommy, that that ABA and Farmer Mac survey showed. We need a bridge into 2026 and not just trade aid. House Ag Committee Chairman GT Thompson, Republican from Pennsylvania, says this trade aid is just a down payment. This is the first tranche. Additional farmer aid is going to come later this year in a must-passed uh spending bill. I don't know what level, but it'll be similar to the$10 billion that uh they inked for farm aid on December 21st last year. And it's needed because of the fertilizer, high fertilizer, and the debt repayment. Uh yeah, absolutely. Debt repayment, higher input cost, etc.

SPEAKER_00:

Higher health insurance, higher life insurance, higher everything insurance. Trump bucks, we still think are on the way. Mr. Weissmeyer, we're at the end of the show. You are the star. This is your show. And of course, you get to finish it. But you better stay optimistic, my friend.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm still optimistic, and I will not call uh farmer and rancher aid a negative. To me, it's positive because why? Food is security, it's national security, it's needed. If you want to have a cheaper food policy, not cheap, a cheaper food policy, you pay it one for one way or the other at the supermarket, which we don't like, those prices going up too high, or a combination of prices and taxpayer uh assistance, and that's what we're going to have. And I and I don't think any farmer should say, of course they want trade and not aid, but until we get there, uh we have to have that bridge assistance, and it's coming.

SPEAKER_00:

Mr. Jim Weiss Mayor. Thank you, sir. See you next week.

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Tommy Grisafi

Host
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Jim Wiesemeyer

Co-host