Democrats seek to woo farm-belt voters by promising to stir up
industry's competition
By Joshua Jamerson
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (April 1, 2019).
STORM LAKE, Iowa -- Democratic presidential candidates pitched
voters in this farm-heavy state on their plans to stir up
competition in the agriculture industry and stem the consolidation
of corporate power in the U.S.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of
Minnesota, as well as former U.S. Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Julián Castro, took aim at Bayer AG's more than $60
billion purchase of Monsanto Co.
"We have got to fight back against consolidation, and I'll make
you a promise: you put me in the White House and I will unwind the
Bayer-Monsanto" deal, Ms. Warren told a group of farmers here
Saturday.
The deal made Bayer the world's biggest supplier of pesticides
and seeds. A flurry of mergers in the global crop seeds and
chemicals market has worried U.S. growers, who are battling a crop
glut that has crimped prices.
Candidates are eager to win the support of Iowa's farmers, a
powerful constituency in the state that holds the
first-in-the-nation primary caucuses in February. Many farmers
interviewed said they were unhappy with the deal because they
feared the combined firm would have greater control over the
market, and some said they simply disliked Germany's Bayer
purchasing an American company.
The candidates are also betting their focus on antitrust can
attract progressive voters generally uneasy with the concentration
of wealth and the power of corporations more broadly.
Ms. Warren has pledged to break up "companies where mergers have
reduced competition," pointing to the Bayer-Monsanto deal in
particular in her proposal outlined last week. She has also
suggested a nationwide ban on foreign individuals or entities from
purchasing farmland for the purpose of farming.
Ms. Klobuchar takes a more measured approach. In an interview
with The Wall Street Journal earlier in March, she said it was
premature to call for breaking up big companies. But she has
introduced several bills in Congress that would update U.S.
antitrust law, including by tweaking legal standards to make it
easier to challenge mergers successfully in court.
Introduced Saturday as "our neighbor to the north" at the
Heartland Forum in Storm Lake, Ms. Klobuchar pitched herself as a
can-do Midwesterner who would be a seasoned advocate for rural
America.
The Minnesotan said her antitrust proposals would spur
competition in agriculture.
"We need to take on the power of these monopolies," she said. "I
just think we're getting to the point where you know you're not
going to get a fair deal."
Some Republicans were skeptical of the Monsanto-Bayer deal.
Iowa's Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, when he was chairman of the
Judiciary Committee in 2016, pressed the Justice Department to
study how the deal would affect competition. "Competition is
critical in this sector. It is essential for the American farm
economy," Mr. Grassley said last year after the department
ultimately cleared the deal.
In a statement Saturday evening, Bayer said the deal with
Monsanto brings together a robust portfolio to offer more choices
for farmers. The company also said there are hundreds of companies
competing for farmers' business.
Mergers in the agriculture industry are playing out as U.S.
growers in recent decades swallowed up acreage to survive a harsh
downturn in crop prices, squeezing smaller operations in the
process. Ms. Warren has argued that big agriculture buyers and
sellers make it even harder for owners of smaller farms to get
by.
"Small and even medium-sized farms get caught between the
giants...that determine the price that the farmers are going to
have to pay for seed," Ms. Warren told reporters Friday. "On the
other end, there may be only one or two buyers for farmers'
product, and so profits get sucked out in the other direction."
Democrats hope that message will resonate in the nation's
heartland, where new tariffs on agricultural exports to China that
were part of the U.S.-China trade dispute have squeezed many
farmers, adding to the pain that low commodities prices have
already inflicted. There has been a sharp increase in farm
bankruptcies.
"Extracting wealth, taking opportunities out of rural regions.
That's what this consolidation has done to us," said Wes Shoemyer,
a Missouri farmer and board member of Family Farm Action, a
progressive nonprofit, at a different event in Storm Lake on
Saturday.
President Trump appeared to back the Monsanto-Bayer deal after
executives assured him the postmerger company would invest in the
U.S. and maintain American jobs.
Mr. Trump has said his trade policies will boost farmers'
incomes, but some say they are feeling the pinch from his broad
trade campaign against China and Beijing's retaliation against
American crops and meat. "The farmers love me. They voted for me,"
he said last year in Iowa, a state he flipped into the GOP column
in 2016. President Obama won the state twice.
Beyond agriculture, Democratic candidates and progressive voters
have taken aim at large financial-services firms and tech
giants.
Ms. Warren has also proposed breaking up Facebook Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Vermont Sen. Bernie
Sanders, another presidential hopeful, has long called for breaking
up the largest U.S. banks -- something other candidates also
support.
Officials within the Justice Department's antitrust division and
the independent Federal Trade Commission are tasked with enforcing
U.S. antitrust law.
Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, Mr. Trump's appointee
who runs the antitrust division, said at a conference Friday in
Washington that antitrust proposals by presidential candidates are
generally misguided, without naming specific candidates or
policies. He said regulators must stake out firm positions based on
legal arguments, adding that officials in his agency "can't just
walk into court and say company X should be broken up because it's
too big."
A Justice Department spokesman said that the department is aware
of the Democratic proposals but declined to comment on them.
Mark Kuhn, a third-generation soybean and corn farmer in Floyd
County, Iowa, said Democratic candidates including Ms. Warren and
Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) have impressed him with their messages
against big agriculture. Mr. Booker has proposed a moratorium on
all corporate mergers.
Mr. Kuhn hasn't decided whom he will support in the Iowa
caucuses but liked what Ms. Warren had to say.
"She talked about a lot of issues that are just really, really
important to me," he said.
Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 01, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
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