D.C. Memo: China bends on soybean boycott

Happy Thanksgiving, D.C. Memo readers! With tomorrow’s holiday just around the corner, we’re posting the memo in advance. Thanks for reading and have a great holiday.

WASHINGTON – Minnesota farmers are hoping China’s first purchases of U.S. soybeans since May means the end of a boycott that has roiled the industry and prompted calls for a federal farm bailout.

Beijing failed to contract for U.S.-grown soybeans after President Donald Trump placed hefty tariffs on Chinese products. But after Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last month and agreed to a year-long truce on the contentious tariffs and retaliatory measures, China agreed to purchase 12 million tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the year.

China has booked about 2 million tons of U.S. soybeans and a smaller amount of U.S. wheat since the meeting between Trump and Xi. The first shipment of those soybeans left U.S. ports for China this week.

“I was one of those fearful people who thought my soybeans were not going to sell,” said Ryan Mackenthun, who grows soybeans on a farm his family has had for five generations in Brownton.

But Mackenthun said that after China made this initial purchase, “farmers have a little hope that they are going to be back in the market.”

Many of the soybeans in the first shipment to China since the trade thaw come from northern Minnesota and the Dakotas since those are easily shipped to ports in the Pacific Northwest, said Mackethun, who is also a vice president of the Minnesota Soybeans Growers Association.

Mackenthun also says Minnesota soybeans travel down the Mississippi River and through the Panama Canal to China.

Yet that Chinese market has shrunk for U.S. farmers since Trump first placed tariffs on Chinese goods during the president’s first term in office.

“We’ve been losing that market since the first trade war,” he said.

So, to Mackenthun, the future of soybeans lies in crushing them to make fuel. “For the last two years (biodiesel) has been the saving grace,” he said.

Still, Trump held an hour-long phone call with Xi this week, which resulted in an invitation to the president to visit Beijing in April, leading to hopes for a broader rapprochement.

Increased trade with China is important to U.S. farmers for another  reason besides sales, Mackenthun said, because American farmers are purchasers of rare minerals and other Chinese inputs.

“We need that trade to be open,” he said.

‘An attack on one of us …’

Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress stoked the flames of a story this week that prompted President Donald Trump to end protections for Somali immigrants.

That story by City Journal, a right-wing publication, was entitled “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota Taxpayer.”

It said that Gov. Tim Walz and the state’s DFLers were “asleep at the switch” while millions of dollars in stolen funds were sent back to Somalia “where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab.”

That story prompted Trump to end protections for Somalis who are in the United States on Temporary Protected Status (TPA), which allows certain immigrants who are endangered by repressive regimes and/or war-torn countries back home to legally live and work in the United States for designated periods of time that can be extended.

However, only about 400 of the approximately 80,000 Somalis who live in Minnesota are under TPS. Most are citizens or legal residents.

Still, Reps. Tom Emmer, R-6^th District; Pete Stauber, R-8^th District; Michelle Fischbach, R-7^th District; and Brad Finstad, R-1^st District; wrote new U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen this week to investigate allegations of funding of Al-Shabaab by members of Minnesota’s Somali community.

“It is  alleged that Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the nation, has been sending millions back to Somalia via the hawala network, an informal money trafficking network which is notorious for funds ending up in terrorist networks, and in this instance, Al-Shabaab,” their letter said. “These allegations follow criminal indictments for fraud against six members of the Somali community in September, relating to hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent payments … .”

The City Journal article said a first-in-the-nation program called Minnesota Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services that “was launched with a noble goal: to help seniors, addicts, the disabled and the mentally ill secure housing” was defrauded of millions of dollars with the help of six Somalis.

“We are confident that (Rosen) will uncover the truth and hold terror-funding fraudsters — and those who enable them — accountable,” Emmer posted on X.

In their letter to Rosen, Minnesota’s GOP lawmakers also wrote that “the majority of over 70 defendants involved in the $250 million Feeding our Future fraud scheme were also a part of the Minnesota Somali community.”

That pandemic-era nutrition scam syphoned off more than $25o million that was intended for meals for children in need. But prosecutors said the  purloined money was spent on homes, luxury items, expensive trips and even to purchase land in Kenya, not used to fund terrorist groups.

At a press conference this week at the state Capitol, Democratic Reps. Betty McCollum, D-4^th District, and Ilhan Omar, D-5^th District, who was born in Somalia, decried the “fearmongering” by Trump and state Republicans against the Somali community. McCollum said “an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

“Back to late Friday night, when (Trump) hurled ugly late-night threats against Minnesota’s Somali community,” McCollum said. “You have to ask yourself why. It’s because Trump and Republicans are doing nothing to address the real crises facing us as Americans. The U.S. economy is in shambles, the cost of living is soaring, Trump and Republicans have created a health care crisis, and they’ve failed to deliver essential heating assistance for Minnesotans this winter.”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post this week focused national scrutiny on the state’s Somali community with an editorial about the involvement of  some of its members in the housing program and Feeding our Future fraud. Citing the City Journal story, the editorial said there’s “serious and pervasive welfare fraud in the Somali community.”

Trump followed up his removal of TPS status for Somalis with an announcement this week that he would remove TPS protection from immigrants from war-torn Myanmar. Removal of those protections would  impact about 1,000 members of Minnesota’s 4,000-strong Karen community.

In other news:

▪️Brian Arola wrote about a food co-op in Detroit Lakes that is adding a commercial kitchen with the help of federal funding. The hope is it will allow local growers to make more products with their food.

▪️Cleo Krejci took a close look at Minnesota’s hemp regulations just as Democratic Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar announced efforts to reverse a federal ban on most hemp-derived THC products.

▪️And just in time for Thanksgiving, Forrest Peterson reported on a poultry testing lab in Willmar that has been combatting avian influenza – commonly known as ‘bird flu’ – and recently obtained a $1 million federal grant for upgrades.

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