Editorial: Ernst correct on views

We strongly agree with U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst on a pair of topics she addressed at a town hall gathering earlier this month in Sanborn.

Ernst, a first-term Republican, said she favors market solutions for farmers, not government assistance.

“What I am hearing from groups all across the state of Iowa is that’s not what we want to see. We don’t need any more support programs for farmers. We really just want the trade,” she said. “Let us raise our products and let’s sell them to a global market.”

That’s a sound principle and one that most of us can endorse. But with the ongoing trade war launched by President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on long-standing business partners, we have seen commodity prices impacted.

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“We do need good trade deals out there and in particular I always point to China because China has been a horrible trade partner to the United States for a long time,” Ernst said. “We’ve encouraged the president to hurry up with these trade deals. The good news is that we have the EU (European Union). That negotiation is going quite well.”

She also is optimistic that a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico will be signed this fall. We hope she is right, because NAFTA has been a big positive for our farmers, with dairy producers seeing a sharp increase in sales to our closest neighbors, selling more than $1.2 billion of their products to Mexico in 2016.

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To read the editorial in full, click here.