Latest news with #NorthDakotaFarmersUnion
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jamestown mayor criticizes Legislature over property tax reform
May 8—JAMESTOWN — Mayor Dwaine Heinrich criticized the North Dakota Legislature for creating "chaos at the local level" over property tax reform while also touting the progress that has been made in Jamestown. Heinrich said the Legislature's passage of House Bill 1176 is "very positive action" and means millions of extra dollars for Jamestown residents. He said HB 1176 grants a $1,600 property tax buydown on every taxable primary residence in the state but also caps the amount local political subdivisions can raise levies at 3% yearly. "From a local political subdivision standpoint, the disappointing part of the property tax buydown discussion was the unnecessary false narrative surrounding the property tax issue and the blatant political pandering made part of the process," he said. "If political pandering were an Olympic event, some North Dakota legislators would be sporting shiny new gold medals, unless of course they were disqualified for the use of steroids or other performance enhancing drugs." Heinrich delivered the State of the City address on Thursday, May 8, at North Dakota Farmers Union. He criticized the passage of HB 1176 in its current form, expressed frustration with a housing development bill that failed and touted economic development in the Jamestown area in the past 47 years. Heinrich said the 3% cap on raising levies annually is not workable for the city of Jamestown. He said local political subdivisions will need to find other ways to raise money. Heinrich said the city of Jamestown receives about $5 million in property taxes for its general fund that is used by police, fire and municipal court. He said sometimes health insurance costs increase annually by 10%. "We have no control over the costs of police cars, fire equipment and other supplies that we must purchase," he said. "On these budgets, costs over which we have no control likely will exceed the 3% cap. This without any pay raises for employees or cost-of-living raises. A 3% cap for many political subdivisions across the state is simply going to create chaos for many of our cities who do not have access to large per-capita tax bases or other funds." Using approximate numbers, Heinrich said the city of Jamestown's per-capita value of taxable real property — which is fourth lowest in the state — is about $39,000 compared to the city of Wahpeton and $33,000 and the city of Bismarck at $66,000. He said Bismarck has the highest per capita value of taxable real property in the state while Wahpeton has the lowest. "It would follow that in Wahpeton the taxes or mill levies would have to be twice as high as in Bismarck to raise the same number of dollars per capita," he said. "Given that there is often an economy in scale, that puts even a greater burden on communities with lower population and lower property valuation per capita." Heinrich also said a recent article on property taxes shows North Dakota ranks 34th out of 50 states for property tax burden. When looking at the total tax burden per capita in the nation, North Dakota ranks 43rd, he said. Heinrich said the city of Jamestown received another setback in its attempt to develop residential lots with the Legislature killing Senate Bill 2225. "We are now back at the drawing board and we will continue until we are successful," he said. Senate Bill 2225 would have established the Housing for Opportunity, Mobility and Empowerment (HOME) grant program in the North Dakota Department of Commerce. The program would have provided grant dollars for one-third of the infrastructure costs for residential development projects. The local political subdivision and the developer of the residential lots would each provide one-third of the costs for residential development projects. Heinrich said the Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp., the city of Jamestown and Stutsman County were proactive and approved potential funding to use the program. The JSDC Board of Directors had approved in March a forgivable loan of $1 million to the city of Jamestown that will be used as matching dollars for a grant program that helps create residential housing development. The funding was contingent on approval of Senate Bill 2225 in the state Legislature. Heinrich said one challenge for Jamestown is overcoming news by social media and negative comments about the city. He said some negative comments include Jamestown remaining the same for years and no new development going on. In his 47 years of living in Jamestown, he said the University of Jamestown has gone through a "remarkable" transformation, a new high school has been built, and the Jamestown Civic Center has become the host to state girls basketball tournaments. Heinrich said the I-94 Business Park in Jamestown and the Spiritwood Energy Park Association's industrial park at Spiritwood are also the result of positive forward-thinking individuals in the community. "All of these things did not happen by accident," he said. "They happened because of you." Moving forward, Heinrich said a large portion of aged infrastructure is getting replaced, including aged water lines and water mains. "Constantly failing water lines creates a huge expense to you, the city taxpayers, as it is very expensive to dig up and repair failed waterlines particularly during the winter months," he said. He said the city is fortunate to have expert grant writers who have helped Jamestown receive millions of collars for projects. He said the $9 million water main replacement project will be completed without using any locally generated tax dollars. Heinrich also said the Legislature revised the "Operation Prairie Dog" program. He said there isn't enough information on the changes to the program to fully understand the impacts to the city. "What I do understand is the Prairie Dog bucket was moved up in the oil funding stream to almost certainly guaranteed funds, but it looks to me that the guarantee will be about $3.5 million instead of the $5 million per biennium we have received the last couple of sessions," he said. Heinrich added that additional funding was added to the North Dakota Department of Transportation's budget that will go directly to cities and more grant funding might be available.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tariffs hurt farmers, consumers, North Dakota Farmers Union president says
Apr. 19—JAMESTOWN — Tariffs are almost a "lose-lose" for North Dakota and hurt farmers and consumers, according to Mark Watne, president of North Dakota Farmers Union. "It creates a certain amount of uncertainty on our reliability to both buy and sell to other countries," he said. "When you do it alone, then you really open up the world for moving trade to other areas. If you want to do a tariff, if you pick a specific problem and get multiple countries to come with you and then go after a single country, you might have some good rationale and good success, but broad-based tariffs without a lot of support of anyone else is never a good thing for North Dakota agriculture." President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 2 to impose a minimum 10% tariff on all imports to the U.S. effective April 5. Higher tariffs — ranging from 11% to 50% — were scheduled to take effect on April 9 on imports from 57 countries. On April 9, Trump announced he would suspend tariffs on all countries other than China for 90 days. The 10% tariff remains in effect. Watne said tariffs will affect crop prices on commodities. "You can't really project exactly how much movement it will mean, but they will go down if we have less trade," he said, referring to prices on commodities. "So if we don't garner that trade back, that recovery also will be less than what it may have been when prices start to move back up again." He said commodity prices depend on multiple factors including weather conditions and what other countries will do in response to the U.S. tariffs. "Will they increase acres and replace us," he said. "But the past trends, ever since tariffs were enacted, was it causes a downplay in the marketplace for commodities." Watne said the only way the consumer wins is if manufacturing companies come back to the U.S. and can manufacture goods at a lower price. "If you come back here, unless you're going to lower the labor cost here, which you're not going to be able to do, prices are going to go up," he said NDFB recognizes the importance of both national security and fair trade, said Daryl Lies, president of the North Dakota Farm Bureau, on March 4. At the time, he said Trump's tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China are part of a broader effort to ensure that American industries, including agriculture, compete on a level playing field while strengthening our nation's security. "We understand that these actions may bring short-term hardships to farmers and ranchers,," he said. "Agriculture has always been a cornerstone of our state's economy, and we remain hopeful that negotiations will lead to swift and fair resolutions that uphold the long-term interests of our producers and country." North Dakota Soybean Growers Association President Justin Sherlock, who is from Dazey, North Dakota, said tariffs increase input costs for farmers. "A lot of our inputs are crop protection products, fertilizer, parts for machinery, and the machinery itself is manufactured in other countries, so we pay more for those inputs," he said. Sherlock said agriculture is a bright spot in U.S. export markets and oftentimes countries hit back on agriculture with retaliatory tariffs when the U.S. puts tariffs on their goods. "The farmer often takes the first hit in a trade war on the U.S. side," he said. He said trade wars aren't good for farmers. "We've been here before," he said. "In 2018, that was just China. Now we seem to be taking on the entire world all at once." In 2018, Sherlock said the biggest impact on farmers was on the basis — the difference in value between the local cash price of the commodity and its future price of the crop. "The basis just really widened out," he said. "The market was telling us that it didn't want North Dakota soybeans at that time." Sherlock said soybean prices took a huge hit which triggered the Market Facilitation Program payments to farmers to help offset some financial losses. "Payments like that are a Band-Aid on an open wound," Sherlock said. "They maybe help you hang on for a little while, but government aid never really makes the farmer whole." Although China eventually started purchasing soybeans from the U.S. again, the country shifted its soybean demand to Brazil, he said. "Since 2018, Brazil has continued to expand its production every single year, and Brazil has now overtaken the U.S. as the largest soybean exporter in the world," Sherlock said. "They are right there neck and neck with the U.S. as the world's largest corn exporter. The reality is Brazil will likely continue to expand and especially now that we find ourselves in a trade war again, China will likely shift as much of their demand to Brazil as they can." During a trade war, another country is forced to either comply or search for products elsewhere, Watne said. He said if the tariffs were to stop and that country has found products elsewhere, that country is less likely to come back and purchase the U.S. products. "To think that the price is automatically just going to recover if we take the tariff off isn't true," he said. Watne said the U.S. exports around 80% of its crops from North Dakota. "Some goes domestic and some goes into the foreign markets, but most of the soybeans and soy meal and soy oil ends up going out the Pacific Northwest into the Asian markets," he said. He said Canada and Mexico are the next biggest trade partners which are more friendly countries to the U.S. "If you were to try to go after the relationship and trade with China, and you brought Europe and Canada and Brazil with you to the table, you'd probably have substantially more influence on China," Watne said. "When you go after Mexico, Canada, China, and you don't have any real path forward for them to fix it, and you have no other support, then you're making a mistake. That's not what I would say is a very good strategy." He said the U.S. doesn't have the economic power it used to have with trade. "A lot of these countries that we had this distinctive advantage in logistics and transportation and ports have caught up to us, so we're not as impactful to the market all right as we used to be," he said. Sherlock said farmers won't know how the tariffs will affect soybean demand until the summer or even closer to harvest. He said many countries start placing orders for soybeans during the spring. "But a lot of the orders don't come until summer for fall delivery or winter delivery so the impact isn't going to be known for a while yet," he said. "I think that's one thing that maybe trips people up that don't know about that is we haven't seen a drop in soybean demand yet, perhaps because this isn't our typical season where we ship soybeans." Watne said it isn't easy for farmers to switch to growing other crops. He said the vast majority of crops grown in the U.S. is corn, which the price is based off of the Chicago Board of Trade. "Even if you go to a specialty crop or anything like that, they're never going to pay a lot more than what it gets to make somebody switch their acres from corn," he said. "So if corn price and soybean price are lower, for example, that means all the other crops prices go down. So this stuff tracks very well together. There's been proof of some direct relationships between the price of corn and soybeans with everything else, even to the price of fertilizer, even to the price of crude oil because you got an energy market too and all that so you've got just a lot of commodities that move together." Although farmers have the ability to store crops, they are getting no income for doing that. If commodity prices keep declining, Watne said farmers are in a scenario where their banks won't loan operational funds until grain is moved because the markets don't always respond as they hope. He said it costs money to store grain as well. "You're paying interest and you don't know if the price is going to come up," he said.
CBC
06-04-2025
- Business
- CBC
Tariffs on Canadian goods having a 'devastating effect,' U.S. farmers say
American farmers say U.S.-imposed tariffs on Canadian goods are having a "devastating effect" on the local agriculture sector south of the border. On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs for dozens of countries. Canada and Mexico were notably spared in this round, but previous 25 per cent tariffs on some Canadian products will remain. Some U.S. farmers say the tariffs are already making it harder for producers in their country, already long accustomed to hardship, to make a living. "Most farmers are pretty used to adversary things and situations like this," Doug Sombke, president of the South Dakota Farmers Union, said. "But I think many of them were actually struck and shocked." The tariffs are having a "devastating effect on both ends" for producers in the state, who will likely see the price they're paid for their product go down amid tariffs and counter-tariffs, even as the cost of fertilizer and equipment rises, said Sombke. There were already drops in market prices after Trump announced the latest tariffs this week, he noted. "This was just a horrible idea," he said." Whoever thought that tariffs were good for the country, they really don't understand civics and/or economics very well." Sombke said 90 per cent of the state's potash — which is used as a fertilizer and is currently being tariffed at 10 per cent — comes from Canada, while much of its farming equipment carries a "made in Canada" stamp. North Dakota Farmers Union vice-president Bob Kuylen also said he's "very frustrated" with the tariffs, warning they could be detrimental to the future of agriculture in Manitoba's neighbouring state. The 25 per cent steel tariffs could make purchases of necessary farm equipment much more expensive, he told host Marcy Markusa in a Friday interview with CBC's Information Radio. For example, he says Canada makes good-quality no-till drills — specialized equipment that plants seeds without disturbing the soil — but their $1-million price tag would cost a U.S. farmer $250,000 more with the tariff. "That's a heck of a hit," he said. 'Time machine' needed to undo damage: economist North of the border, Canadian agriculture economists worry that the U.S. tariffs have already done irreparable damage to the economies of both countries. Ryan Cardwell, a professor with the University of Manitoba's department of agribusiness and agricultural economics, says a "time machine" might be the only way to fix it. "The degree of uncertainty that has been created by the last few months of policy change in the United States, I think has done permanent damage," he said. "It's all very troubling and creates a lot of uncertainty and barriers to trade that have not existed for a very long time between Canada and the U.S." He said Trump's "chaotic trade policy" has shaken predictability for investors, which will inevitably slow economic growth in Canada, the U.S. and almost all countries that trade with the two. "People, investors, farmers, producers now have less certainty. They are less willing to undertake the kind of investment that generates economic growth," he said. It's still possible that Trump could reverse the tariffs yet again, but Cardwell worries it might be too late. "Even if these tariffs disappear tomorrow, that uncertainty still exists," he said. "I don't see a way to turn that around." In North Dakota, where Trump took nearly 68 per cent of the vote in November's election, Kuylen said it feels as if the president is "fighting with food all the time." "We should be eating well instead of fighting with our food, with all of our friends and neighbours to the north and the south of us." Sombke says he's disappointed to see Trump — who was backed by 63 per cent of voters in South Dakota — turn close trading allies into adversaries. Instead, he wants to see farmers "visit with your neighbours" across international borders. "What we need to do is find ways to work together to help each other, as a world market, rather than go through these tit-for-tat types of situations that are never helpful for anyone." "We've become such enemies just because of this one man."
