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> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US. Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't have federal subsidies propping up a domesti
by _heimdall 2y ago
> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.
Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't have federal subsidies propping up a domestic olive industry that can compete with corn and soy?
I ready don't know the details well enough there, but it feels like this could just be selection bias at play.
- yifanl 2y agoSurely the null hypothesis isn't "The USA would have a domestic industry for every crop known to man if not for external factors"
- apexalpha 2y agoOh that's 100% what Potus thinks. There's no other rationale for this other than thinking this.
- jredwards 2y agoYou're assuming he has any rationale at all
- overfeed 2y agoLeverage over importers, i.e. all of industry. If you're a captain of industry and want an exemption or a lowered rate, they you approach the deal table, cap in hand, with tears in your eyes and beg like a dog. "Please, sir..." In return for a minor reprieve, you ensure your factory bathrooms and hiring policies are aligned with the president's agenda, among many other things. This can be a cudgel over the heads of the Apples and Costcos of this country who dare to defy the edicts of POTUS on social policy.
- phtrivier 2y agoOther popular options are very publicly taking your card of the Party, writing odes and poems to the Great Leader, and give your firstborn daughter's virginity as a token of vassality. The problem is not so much that people don't like doing such things - they get by - it's that, at some point, enough people will start getting more favours than you do, and you'll start feeling the need to stage a coup, which is a lot of work. I wonder how it will work out in a world where tiktok is always there as a much less exhausting form of entertainment than revolutions.
- _heimdall 2y agoLet's ignore whether we'll actually get there, that's a very deep question and entirely theoretical for now. If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
- scratchyone 2y agoNo, because it is far more expensive to domestically produce our own products. I would rather not have a huge increase in the cost of living.
- giantg2 2y agoI don't want a cost of living increase either. However, this raise the question of what the real cost is. The prices might be cheaper, but is that only because we're exploiting poorer people in markets with fewer worker protections and fewer environmental protections? Is it just because I'm greedy and I'm not willing to pay someone a liveable wage here or go without whatever it is? I'm not sure, but it makes for an interesting thought experiment.
- rthomas6 2y agoI worry about this, but I started worrying about it less when I read about Purchasing Power Parity. The same stuff costs less in poorer countries.
- giantg2 2y agoFor some things that's true. For others it is not, or at least not enough to make up for the difference. For example, "housing" might cost less, but the definition of housing might be different. Even if we adjust the standards and built the exact same thing, it would be cheaper, but likely still out of reach for the average person in the poorer market.
- anonfordays 2y agoShhhh, you're not supposed to ask those questions!
- blitzar 2y agoOr (more likely) they would not have access to many crops at all. Personally I don't mind not having strawberries in the middle of winter, but for some they care about that.
- hombre_fatal 2y agoSure, but that's the rationalizing of someone who can't get strawberries in winter. Getting food that's not grown locally much less in the current local season is one of the most QoL-improving parts of the modern world. Kinda sad to go from that back to "well I guess I don't really need these nice things we took for granted. I suppose I can live off jellied eels again."
- me_again 2y agoDonald Trump, champion of the locavore community. Now I've heard everything.
- roxolotl 2y agoYou can grow olives in the US and there are some farms in CA. The quantities produced are orders of magnitude off though and given the time it takes to grow olive orchards we cannot replace our imports of olives in a reasonable time period. There's a lot of examples like this. Coffee, and bananas come to mind. You can only grow those in Hawaii, or maybe Flordia, and there's absolutely not enough land to sate our imports. The whole theory behind international trade is that some countries do things well and others don't. In the case of food the reality is more that others can't.
- lupusreal 2y agoThere are olive farms as far north as Oregon. I visited one a few years ago and bought some olive oil; it was very good.
- jm4 2y agoHawaii is the only U.S. state where you can grow coffee and their coffee costs a fortune. You need tropical weather and high altitude. Florida won't cut it. Besides, we already have fruit rotting in the fields in Florida because there's no one to pick it. Want to put tariffs on Chinese electric cars or batteries? Ok, fine. But tariffs on all imports? It's the most brain dead policy in my lifetime. I can't think of any products that are produced 100% domestically without any foreign inputs. These tariffs will drive up the price of just about everything.
- baby-yoda 2y agoPuerto Rico (yes not a state) has active coffee farms.
- kochb 2y agoThe exact growing conditions for olive production aren’t common in the US, so most of the production comes from California - west of Sacramento and south along the San Joaquin river. There are a lot of barriers in bringing specialty crops to market related to know-how and contracting sale of product, so even in other areas where growth may be possible it may be infeasible. https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/olives https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/olives https://croplandcros.scinet.usda.gov/ https://croplandcros.scinet.usda.gov/
- Yeul 2y agoI mean if you could make olive oil cheaper in America wouldn't someone have done that by now? The US never lacked for smart entrepreneurs looking for a business opportunity. See wine.
- newyankee 2y agoMost likely the answer in many such examples is it needs cheap human labor. US seldom lacks anything in terms of natural resources and always comes down to this.
- Yeul 2y agoSo basically all you need to do is pay Americans less... Sounds like a race to the bottom. In Italy it is not Italians who work in agriculture they also have (illegal) migrants.
- fnord77 2y agoAlmost all the olive oil in my local Costco comes from California
- bavarianbob 2y agoHard for me to believe that even with a surplus of domestic production that comparative advantage of importing still wouldn't be better.
- Beretta_Vexee 2y agoAn olive tree reaches the peak of its productivity after 15 years and can live for several centuries. An adult tree can be so expensive that there are cases of theft. It takes a heavy truck and a tree puller to steal an olive tree.