down from a previous forecast of 2.6 percent. and from south america to the ever present concerns over the ongoing trade tussle between the world's largest economies many crop prices in the us are on an upswing despite the trade war including corn futures are up one of 14 percent in may the gains are mostly due to the concerns over the size and quality of this year's harvest soybeans are still reeling due to the trade fight between washington and beijing and the swine fever epidemic that is affecting china's pig herd which has in turn reduce demand globally for animal feed joining us now to discuss all things agriculture and food is fred kaufman all star of that's the farm welcome back fred so 1st of all let's get your take on corn corn futures are up 14 percent for the month of may hitting a 3 year high at midweek the wall street journal today cites figures from the agriculture department showing significant delays in corn planting while extreme weather related to climate change may hurt yields and flooding could taint grain or

ease what should our viewers know about the situation and how serious is it. well it's been an extraordinary week in the problem with corn is only about a little more than half of it is in the ground now when in fact usually we're almost at 90 percent so there is just a tremendous amount of uncertainty plus added to the mix a lot of the short sellers are settling their position but the fact of the matter is this is a fairly serious situation and in fact there are about a 1000000 open futures contracts right now to the extent that chicago board has asked that people increase their margin requirements put some more money in when when people are asking for money it probably means it's a little bit serious the actual ramifications will ultimately be felt by the consumer next spring right in time for the elections. and you know fred more broadly what is or what will be the impact on ag markets of the extreme weather we've been seeing that's been a factor here with the flooding. you know flooding greener reeds and people

delaying planting decisions because it's just too soggy out there obviously it's a wide ranging impact but what what is what is the best way to get a handle on it now what's going to happen here. climate change is not a hoax climate change is not a fiction climate change is happening and we really have to take a very long hard look at it particularly farmers because when we have warmer weather crops come to market they they bloom sooner there is more path and more need for pesticide soils are soggy there's the yields go down so there's a lot of long term focus on the work that's going to be required to the climate change and plus we have all these these these other crazy conditions not just the rain in the warmth but the tornadoes that are just really blowing away entire farms at this point what we're going to see are some early retirements we're going to see some bankruptcies more bankruptcies and really we're going to be losing farmers we're seeing generations of farmers that are being blown off the land due to the

changing conditions it's a big deal and on to soybeans which christie alluded to in the intro bloomberg is reporting that state green producers in china are winding down these so-called goodwill purchases of usa sawyer exports since goodwill seems to now be in scarce supply in the u.s. china trade talks what's the outlook for u.s. soil exports and the world's oil market especially in light also of the continuing swine flu outbreak in china which is dampening demand for soya animal feed. look we're looking at almost double the amount of unsold soybeans for next year the the market looks pretty dire for a soirée and in fact just this morning china said we're just not buying it we're done so that's going to cause a shock and the other problem of course that everybody is dying to take our position is the global supplier of soy brazil argentina they're stepping right up to the plate and you know the the accepted wisdom is that once the market is gone

it doesn't easily come back so that's the position we're in and in terms of the swine flu we are really losing such an extraordinary opportunity for our hog farmers in this country the moment where we're seeing 34 percent of the hog farms in china go and having to kill their herds u.s. farmers could be supplying that livestock instead they're totally shut out it's a disaster in terms of the tariff policy and fred i want to ask you about the economic research service the u.s. agriculture department has i'm sure many of our viewers and i we have consulted that you are asked publications to stay on top of the market conditions and trends but now politico is reporting that $203.00 staff out of the $279.00 ers are being moved out of the headquarters in the d.c. area and many of them suspect that this forced move is payback from the white house for any our support on an equal benefits of the trump tax cut for the richest farmers so what do you think on that and is it as bad as we think it is. i've got

a real problem with sonny perdue who's who's the head of the department right now he's a blatant political hack and is a blatant political hack move and we're talking about a guy who really does not use a climate change denier and not only that the last time drought hit his home state georgia when he was governor what did he do he convened his staff to pray for rain this is not a man who really needs to be in charge of such a large agency he is moving 2 thirds of his staff he's trying to get rid of it this is not the time to deny science this is a time to really beef up the agricultural research service and this is actually one of the more serious news items that has been under the radar and we should really keep our eye on it because this is the job we need we need research and we need hard cold statistics thank you for that bad cough and that's a fire thank you for being here. thank you. the chinese u.s.

trade war has rocked the markets with the s. and p. 500 down 5.5 percent in may and the dow off by 1300 points and in retaliation for the latest terrorist china the world's largest soybean buyer has halted purchases of american soybeans u.s. soybean farmers are hit hard as the value of soybean exports to china fell 74 percent to $3100000000.00 in 2018 from $12200000000.00 the previous year and futures tanked to the lowest level since 2009 the trumpet ministration has now unveiled a $16000000000.00 bailout to farmers who have been hurt by the trade war but members of the senate agriculture committee were quick to point out that government checks are no replacement for lost markets and that's merely a temporary support joining us now to discuss the latest market moves as jeff so mark managing partner at our financial so jeff 1st of all what is your broad take on this is trade war has gotten out of hand it's escalating possibly out of control of either side american consumers are paying higher prices the tech industry is

being threatened and now farmers are hurting is the only thing the trumpet ministries can offer a bailout this seems like a temporary fix obviously what do you think. i think there's more to the bailout than just a temporary fix this trade war seems to be blown out of proportion to some extent i mean we had this trade war last year and it settled down we have the g. 20 summit coming up next month and i think if any rational leader comes together in the summit we're going to come away with a trade deal so the markets seem to be really emotional right now you know this is only the 3rd trading day of the week due to the holiday and it's typical after memorial day to see a decline and then flatlined so you know we saw all these worries the last 2 days about the trade war and then today all of a sudden the markets are soft and they say oh we're not so worried about global recession anymore i think that bailout is

a good move by the administration it's still yet to be seen how much is going to help the local or independent farmer you know $62000000.00 went to j.b.s. which is actually owned by brazil so we're not sure who really the beneficiary is going to be of the bailout but it is a good step in the right direction. and right now it's a trade war escalates in china china and the government is actually tightening out money flows and so it seems that there's a concern that if there was a sudden shock to the country china may not have enough u.s. dollars to support its own currency now china sitting on $3.00 trillion dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves and that's the world's largest reserve so is this a real concern. i don't think it's a real concern china has to hold that foreign exchange because their currency is based on a basket of foreign currencies that they manage as floating rate and so they can't just deplete the reserves they need the reserves but they don't have the surplus to

be from up as much as they used to i don't think it's enough you know it's not even the 30 percent of the g.d.p. that that they would need so i don't think it's a real concern but china is definitely in pursuit of taken the u.n. to be a foreign reserve currency on its own so they have to be very careful with the valuation of the u.n. today. speaking of the currency is it possible busy that you one could face another devaluation if the trade war drags on longer than anybody expects china you know in 22015 or 20152017 burned to a trillion dollars just to defend the want you want from a full blown currency crisis how likely is it that we could see another crisis with a similar response from chinese authorities to hold up the currency. well it's in china's best interest to not have that currency devalue in their pursuit of taking their currency to a world reserve currency they need it to hold strong and if it starts to devalue

it's going to deter foreign investment both into the country and into the currency china needs this trade deal as bad as the us does you know one of the probably the most pressing factors that we're going to see push this thing to a resolution is that the 2020 campaign season is just around the corner. and trump was to go into that season and having this hanging over his head is this issue that's still dragging on the economy or the markets of the country he was to go into that with a trade victory so in order for him to do that he has to bring it home to resolution so both sides need this deal done and china definitely needs to maintain their currency valuation. well interesting insight as always jeff so when managing partner at our claim anshul thanks for insight. thanks for having me. and april 28th teen t. mobile and sprint the 3rd and 4th largest carriers in the u.s. took to twitter to officially announced their merger that traders have speculated for years about this $26000000000.00 deal would bring together $126000000.00

customers and an overall improvement in 5 to wireless technology however there deal is running into resistance with the justice department citing antitrust violations and that the deal could end up harming competition in the wireless industry as a condition to clearing their merger the d.o.j. wants to mobile and sprint to lay the groundwork for a new wireless carrier with its own network from the start the biggest concern of the merger was that it would reduce the number of national carriers from 4 to 3 it seems that they're quite keen on maintaining the status quo of 4 national networks even with this merger very interesting story here kristie and this does part of it where the d.o.j. a wants if the companies are going to merge then they have to form another company to compete with them you know so how do they how does that work they cannibalize elements of the 2 companies and are there other pieces out there that they would sort of put together to form this new company to compete with the the new merged

company essentially the only looks like that's going to be like a patchwork deal like part of it's going to come from t. mobile and part is going to be from sprint and maybe another part from spectrum and it's going to be quite a patchwork if you think about it and they're going to be investing money into basically what's going to become their future. predator so really when you think about it it doesn't really quite make sense because they wanted to be more efficient but right now they're going to be offloading assets to fund another competitor so from your perspective you think oh this will be a deal breaker will be sold try to make this make this situation work i think they're going to try to offer a different solution because at this point this doesn't make sense it's not efficient it certainly creates another competitor but i don't think anyone would want to invest in their competitor and t. mobile and sprint have said in terms of 5 g. technology that their merger would hasten the development and implementation of 5 g. technologies or something to that argument absolutely the 2 of them are 2 powerhouses

and the between them they will absolutely improve 5 g. technology in fact that was actually the case before when he actually approached t. mobile years back in 2017 in order to try to acquire them they also wanted to improve technology however again it was also blocked by the d.o.j. citing antitrust violation and said we'll keep an eye on the time now for a quick break but hang here because when we were tearing johnson and johnson is standing trial in oklahoma over the major opioid epidemic barrels of america's lawyer joins us to break down all the latest moves in the landmark lawsuit and how to get a break here the number of coaching style. most

people think to stand out in this business you need to be the 1st one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand out in the news business you just need to ask the right questions and demand the right answer. question. facebook and google started with a great idea and great ideals unfortunately it was also

a very dark side. they are constructing a profile of you and that profile is real it's detailed and it never goes away turns out that google is manipulating your opinions from the very 1st character that you type into the search bar it will always favor one dog food over another one comparative shopping service over another and one candidate over another they can suppress certain types of results deiced on what they think you should be seen if they have this kind of power then democracy is an illusion the free and fair election doesn't exist the more road we give them the sooner we're all.

welcome back the island nation of popular new guinea has a new prime minister and that could mean the end of a controversial gas development agreements the new leader is former finance minister james i'm a rape who recently broke with his predecessor peter o'neill over the $13000000000.00 deal with total s.a.a france well search limited of australia and u.s. based exxon mobil to increase exports of liquefied natural gas when he left the government mr something is wrong somewhere when the government is not unlocking resources for our people now a parliamentarian aligned with the new prime minister told reuters that quote agreements in resource laws will be relooked at as a matter of priority it's going to be a fair deal not necessarily radical outside experts told the wall street journal

the project could be delayed by about 2 years and popular new guinea's corporate partners have not yet made final commitments to the project. major players in the clothing industry are marketing empty promises on improving sweatshop conditions years after a horrific workplace disaster and bangladesh spurred demands for change researchers at the university of sheffield said only 3 of 20 major fashion brands they examined had committed to pay a living wage despite repeating rhetoric about better pay for workers retailers and clothing manufacturers have been under heightened scrutiny with regard to wages and workplace safety since the run up was a building collapse in bangladesh which killed more than a $1100.00 garment workers the sheffield researchers using information garnered by the clean clothes campaign found a lack of clarity from companies on what workers are being paid and no consensus around what defines a living wage the study's director told the u.k. guardian that companies to adopt existing benchmarks and living wage calculation

methodologies and clearly map out how they will achieve living wages are different here is the suppliers and by when. the 1st of 2000 cases brought by states and other local governments against pharmaceutical companies continues in the state of oklahoma johnson and johnson faces a multibillion dollar lawsuit by the state over its alleged role in the opioid crisis legal journalist molly barrows contributor to america's lawyer has been following the case this week molly 1st of all what has been the market reaction to this landmark civil trial in oklahoma. hi daniel christie will johnson and johnson was trading up this morning at point 7 percent it had slid 4.2 percent to close at $0.13 on wednesday which was outpacing the s. and p. 500.7 percent decline well this trial of course has made some investors jumpy is why they think that happened but some analysts think those concerns about the

company's opioid liabilities are overblown and that may be proving to be true t.v. pharmaceuticals was also named in the oklahoma lawsuit but that company settled with the say that the last minute. it for 85000000 there stocks were also down this morning mostly as a result it appears over one analyst speculation but overall it appears all those concerns are starting to level out now also named earlier had been produced pharma but they settled with the state of oklahoma in march for 270000000 johnson and johnson of course denying any wrongdoing in this trial and they are now the only defendant in this trial daniel. yes and where does the trial stand now what are the latest updates. well christi to say continues to make its case against a pharmaceutical company they're saying johnson and johnson accusing them of being a drug kingpin that helped create the quote largest manmade health crisis in oklahoma attorneys for the state pointed out that there were more than 4500 opioid related deaths in between the years of 20072017 alone and they say it's an

addiction crisis that was created by an oversupply of these painkillers brought on by misleading marketing attorneys for the state say pharmaceutical companies push doctors to prescribe more opioids marking them as being safe and effective for quote everyday pain and downplaying the addiction risks j.n.j. argues that their marketing statements were the same as the u.s. food and drug administration statements back in 2009 which said pain killers rarely caused addiction when managed property well the state of oklahoma they are not buying it they say that the companies over supply of opioids created what they call a public nuisance that's the legal angle they're taking with this case that nuisance was created with the created this addiction epidemic and it will cost up to $17500000000.00 they say to combat the resulting drug abuse over the next 20 to 30 years so that's what they're after jan jay is arguing that this public nuisance law does not apply in this case since it is typically used in property dispute so this is going to go on for

a while before we find out exactly what the judge thinks of these arguments guys and mallie you know we've been covering the there's a lot of wall street is. right now but this particular trial situated 4 years in the landscape and how important is this relative to the others. all eyes on this trial if you will because it is historic it's the 1st of almost 2000 cases that have been filed across the country nearly 1900 that are on state lawsuits targeting drug makers and distributors pending around the country so many local tribal governments around the country want to recoup losses that they say occur from responding to this addiction crisis things like babies being born dependent on crime again this is a judge trial and not a jury trial and it will continue for about 2 months they think if johnson and johnson doesn't settle 1st so defendants plaintiffs in the public are getting a chance to see a lot of evidence on both sides including e-mails that the state of oklahoma says show the pressure tactics that the pharmaceutical companies used to get doctors to

prescribe these drugs so we'll continue to follow this case and keep you posted neal christy interesting e-mails we'll see what comes out of those molly barrows contributor to america's lawyers going through time. thank you. here in the digital age print media as are struggling to survive and one newspaper is making a bold bet on its future r.t. america's big picture health and veteran media consultant holland joins that's what the starry for months here on boom bust we've been following the hostile takeover attempt by digital 1st media owned by a hedge fund and then the notorious costcutter with designs on going to the nation's biggest newspaper chain publisher of $100.00 plus local papers plus usa today and that stock is down some 40 percent since that i.p.o. in 2005 and the other print publishers are also suffering from declining

circulation and advertising revenue as eyeballs and dollars are drifting digital and with consumers expecting to get their news for free and one newspaper is betting that free is the key to its digital transition the 200 year old arkansas democrat because that is giving paid digital subscribers free i pads it began in the farthest flung distribution radius the most expensive places to deliver hard copies they spent $12000000.00 on thousands of i pad so far and publisher walter hussman says he's ready to spend millions more his letter to subscribers describes what he calls a complete disruption of the newspaper business model total advertising revenues for all newspapers in the country from the new york times to the smallest weekly were a combined total of 46600000000 annually in 2000 but ad revenues declined to 11800000000

and 2017 that's down 75 percent newspapers typically got 80 percent of their revenue from. advertising and 20 percent of their revenue from readers now it's a bold move with the ad revenue falling the newspaper swapping print dollars for digital dimes so you may be wondering yeah yeah with all this upfront costs they've got to pay for the i pads you gave a number there but they're ready to buy more. but then you've also got to put the content on there we've learned content isn't free you still have to pay journalists sure you know where are they going to get the money. what is the business model for where they're going to get this money and how they're going to get it back losman reckons that if 70 percent of subscribers pay $34.00 a month for digital subscriptions he can maintain his newsroom staff it's 100 journalists no bloodletting and think of all that he's not spending on newsprint is

2 newspapers what jet a fuel is to airlines it's a fluctuating commodity that can make your bottom line convulse and you don't need trucks to drive out to the hinterlands pre-dawn and elves to throw bundles of papers around and you don't need to run that gargantuan printing press either. so that's the expense side for decades newspapers had it made in the shade on the revenue side the advertising sales reps were pretty much order takers placing full page ads for companies like seniors and other retailers who are now dinosaurs in the era of amazon and husband says that going forward his words were not counting on advertising to keep us afloat there will still be ads and they're still going to publish a printed sunday paper but not weekdays anymore like netflix and his business model is based on you paying for something you can't get somewhere else on netflix you get the crown and there are other proprietary shows local new lives in local

newspapers so that's their ace in the hole just that simple thank you so much of the big picture fridays here on our tam macca thank you. and you can catch a boom bust on direct t.v. channel 321 dish network channel 280 or streaming 247 on cool t.v. the free t.v. channel 132 are as always had it that you did doc on 5 r.t. the next time. this footage is unique because there's a tribal lens on normally off limits to the public eric's allowed in because he's this is personal don't. people here know him simply is dr eric he's rich famous some always on the move saving yachts and flying aircraft that.

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