Current Cattle Market Daily Headlines for Monday, June 1, 2020

Mackenzie Johnston

6 years ago

Trump announces new sanctions on Chinese officials, but won’t scrap phase one trade deal

On Friday, President Trump announced new sanctions against Chinese officials. He directed his administration to revoke special trade exemptions for Hong Kong. However, he did say that he would keep a phase one trade deal with China intact.
Sanctions and visa restrictions will be put into place on Chinese officials who played a role in “smothering” Honk Kong’s freedom.
He also directed his administration to end Hong Kong’s preferential treatment in customs, trade and travel.
Along with these restrictions/sanctions, the U.S. will also terminate its relationship with the World Health Organization. Trump feels that China has “total control” over the WHO.
Trump stated that he believes China has engaged in a cover up of the “Wuhan virus.”

Tyson Foods has temporarily closed its Storm Lake, IA pork plant due to 550 workers at the plant testing positive for coronavirus. The plant employs 2,500 individuals.
The plant is scheduled to resume operations later this week after additional cleaning and sanitizing.
The Storm Lake plant has a slaughter capacity of 17,000 hogs per day.

USDA Under Secretary Greg Ibach stated last week that there is “some merit” to calls for a higher percentage of negotiated cash trade in the cattle industry.
Ibach, a cattle rancher from Nebraska, told Brownfield that he is also concerned about price discovery in the industry.
Ibach touched on the fact that often times, we are not able to report prices on what the actual negotiated price for animals really is.
Ibach expects it to be an issues as Congress discusses reauthorization of mandatory price reporting later this year.