Texas cattle ranchers and agriculture producers could face more hardship if changes are made to trade deals with Mexico.
“Mexico is our chief, one of our chief trading partners on an agricultural side. We import approximately 20 billion dollars worth of products from them on any given year and export about 18 1/2 billion,” said Dr. Steve Amosson, a professor and extension economist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension.
Eighty percent of all exports from Mexico make their way to the United States and a big portion of those are agricultural items.
Amosson says there are a lot of what-ifs right now when it comes to how greatly tariffs would affect local producers.
“We just have to see what starts to unfold and right now that is still uncertain. Is there going to actually be a tariff on the imports, is there going to be a retaliatory action and what are more important, when we talk about what is the level of those import tariffs and what is going to be the level of the retaliatory export tariffs?” said Amosson.
Amosson tells us because we export around two and a half billion dollars in corn to Mexico, a tariff would really hurt our farmers.
When it comes to preparing for the loss of more cattle coming in and fewer crops going out, there isn’t a whole lot producers can do according to Amosson.
Luckily, he says with some of the drought conditions and price changes, producers are prepared for the potential problem.
“A thorn in their sides but we’ve got tough producers, they’ve dealt with a lot worse than this,” said Amosson.
(Information from MyHighPlains.com)
