Kevin Spacey has been charged with groping the 18-year-old son of a Boston TV anchor in 2016 — the first criminal case brought against the Oscar-winning actor since his career collapsed amid a string of sexual misconduct allegations over a year ago.

Spacey, 59, is due in court Jan. 7 on the resort island of Nantucket to be arraigned on a charge of indecent assault and battery, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said in a statement Monday. Spacey could get up to five years in prison if convicted.

A criminal complaint was issued by a clerk magistrate at a hearing Thursday, O’Keefe said.

Shortly after the charge became public, Spacey posted a video on YouTube titled “Let Me Be Frank,” breaking a public silence of more than a year.

In a monologue delivered in the voice of Frank Underwood, his character on Netflix’s “House of Cards” who was killed off after the sexual misconduct allegations emerged, he said: “Of course some believed everything and have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess it all; they’re just dying to have me declare that everything they said is true and I got what I deserved. … I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.”

He added, “Soon enough, you will know the full truth.” The three-minute video ended with a burst of cliffhanger music.

A spokeswoman for the actor did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Former news anchor Heather Unruh came forward in November 2017 to say the actor stuck his hand down the pants of her son, who was 18 at the time, and grabbed his genitals at the Club Car Restaurant on Nantucket in July 2016. Her son fled the restaurant when Spacey went to use the bathroom, Unruh said at the time.

Unruh said her son didn’t report the assault right away because he was embarrassed.

“The complainant has shown a tremendous amount of courage in coming forward,” Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for Unruh’s son, said in a statement Monday. “Let the facts be presented, the relevant law applied and a just and fair verdict rendered.”

Spacey remains under investigation on suspicion of sexual assault in Los Angeles for an incident that allegedly occurred in 2016. Prosecutors declined to file charges over a 1992 allegation because the statute of limitations had run out.

He has also faced accusations of sexual misconduct from his time as artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre.

The two-time Oscar winner was among the earliest and biggest names to be ensnared in the #MeToo movement that was sparked by sexual assault and harassment allegations against Hollywood studio boss Harvey Weinstein in October 2017.

His first accuser, actor Anthony Rapp, said Spacey climbed on top of him on a bed when Rapp was 14 and Spacey 26. Spacey said he did not remember such an encounter but apologized if the allegations were true. Spacey also used the statement to disclose he is gay.

Other accusers followed Rapp’s lead. 

Spacey was subsequently fired from “House of Cards,” the political drama in which he starred for five seasons, and his performance as the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was cut from the completed movie “All the Money in the World” and reshot with actor Christopher Plummer. Some other projects he was involved in were shelved.

The case against Spacey represents a rare criminal prosecution in the #MeToo era. Weinstein is awaiting trial in New York, but many other cases have been too old to prosecute, and some accusers have declined to cooperate with authorities.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. stock markets fell sharply on Monday with the S&P 500 down more than two percent and the Dow off nearly three percent.

President Donald Trump is blaming the Federal Reserve (central bank) for stock market declines and other economic problems.

In tweets, Trump has said the only U.S. economic problem is rising interest rates. He accused Fed chief Jerome Powell of not understanding the market and damaging the economy with rate hikes.

The Fed slashed the key interest rate nearly to zero to boost growth during the recession that started in 2007. The central bank kept rates low for several years.

Eventually, growth recovered, and unemployment dropped to its lowest level in 49 years, and Fed officials judged that the emergency stimulus was no longer needed. Fed leaders voted to reduce the stimulus by raising interest rates gradually. The concern was that too much stimulus could spark inflation. Experts say such a sharp increase in prices could prompt a damaging cycle of price increases leading to rising wage demands, which would spark another round of price hikes.

Analysts quoted in the financial press say Trump’s attacks on the Fed make investors worry that the central bank might lose the independence that allows it to make decisions based on economic factors rather than what is politically popular.

Some economists say investor confidence has also been shaken by Trump’s tariffs on major trading partners. Raising trade costs can reduce trade and cutting trade cuts demand for goods and services, which slows economic growth.

Investor confidence, or a lack of it, can cause stock and other markets to decline as worried stock holders sell shares and prospective investors stop buying available stocks. When buyer demand drops, prices fall.

Another factor hurting investor confidence is the political impasse in Washington over money for Trump’s border wall with Mexico. The bickering means Trump and congress can not agree on spending priorities, so legislation paying some government employees has lapsed.

In an effort to calm turbulent markets, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke with leaders of top U.S. banks in an unusual session Sunday. He says they have the money they need for routine operations.
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From: MeNeedIt

The leading pan-European stock exchange has launched a 625 million euro takeover bid to acquire the Oslo Stock Exchange.

Euronext, the operator of stock exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin and Lisbon, said in a statement that it had approached the board of directors of the Oslo Stock Exchange (Oslo Bors VPS) to seek its support for an all-cash offer for all the outstanding shares of Oslo Børs VPS, the Norwegian Stock Exchange and national CSD operator, based in Oslo.

“Euronext strongly believes that Oslo Børs VPS’ unique strategic and competitive positioning, including a global leading position in seafood derivatives and a deep-rooted expertise in oil services and shipping, would further strengthen Euronext’s position as the leading market infrastructure for the financing of the real economy in Europe,” the statement said. 

If the offer is accepted, Euronext would be fully committed to support the development of Oslo Børs VPS and of the broader Norwegian financial ecosystem, the statement said.

Following the initiative of a group of its shareholders to acquire the Oslo Stock Exchange, Euronext has secured support for the offer from shareholders representing 49.6% of all outstanding shares.

However, it is not certain that a transaction will be completed, Euronext’s statement said, but the pan-European stock exchange will communicate material information, if any, in due course.
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From: MeNeedIt

As Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovers from surgery on Friday for early stage lung cancer, two new films are paying tribute to her life and many accomplishments. VOA’s Penelope Poulou reports how the senior justice of Court’s liberal wing is being portrayed on film.
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From: MeNeedIt

You don’t often get a second chance to make a first impression, unless, of course, you’re one of the world’s most popular dinosaurs.

“It’s a different profile, a much more impressive profile in many ways, a pretty scary large animal, as opposed to a lighter, swifter animal,” says the Field Museum’s Director of Exhibitions, Jaap Hoogstraten, who has courted the leading lady of the dinosaurs since she arrived in Chicago nearly twenty years ago.

“Since we put her up in 2000, we’ve made discoveries about the pose. We’ve added the gastralia, which are the belly ribs which changes the outline of Sue quite a bit. Sue is much bulkier.”

The belly ribs are not a new discovery… they’ve existed since the fossil was recovered from obscurity in the rock formations of South Dakota in the early 1990s. That was the beginning of a long legal and physical journey for the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Known as Sue, named for paleontologist Sue Hendrickson who discovered it, the well-preserved specimen arrived as the star attraction in Stanley Hall at the Field Museum in 2000.

But scientists only recently learned how the belly ribs fit onto the overall specimen, which now fundamentally changes what we know about the Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

After a nearly year-long transition to a new exhibit specifically designed for her, Sue will look different to the millions who have seen the dinosaur before. 

“I didn’t really realize that Sue weighed nine tons in real life,” says Hilary Hansen, project manager at the Field Museum. “I think really adding this gastralia, these belly ribs, really changes the profile for Sue, and you can get a sense of how formidable and imposing it must have been to share an environment with this animal.”

Hansen explains that the new exhibit doesn’t just change our understanding of the animal itself, such as the fact it probably couldn’t run, but it also show visitors Sue’s natural environment, and place in history.

“What we’re trying to do is bring together everything about Sue that was all over the museum into one space so our visitors can see this as a one stop shop for all things Sue.”

“It pushes what we know about T-Rex forward,” says Hoogstraten, including possible answers to how Sue met her fate.

“One possibility is that there was an infection, and that she possibly starved to death.”

The Field museum typically welcomes over one million visitors a year, a number Hilary Hansen expects to spike when the new Sue exhibit opens to the public just in time for the holiday rush.

“For the next three weeks or so, we’re expecting between seven to ten thousand visitors coming through a day.” Some, revisiting an old friend with a new look. 

But even though science marches on, one mystery about Sue remains. 

Despite the name, experts are still not sure if the dinosaur behind this fossil was male or female.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary called top U.S. bankers on Sunday amid an ongoing rout on Wall Street and made plans to convene a group of officials known as the “Plunge Protection Team.”

U.S. stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks on concerns over slowing economic growth, with the S&P 500 index on pace for its biggest percentage decline in December since the Great Depression.

“Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Twitter shortly before financial markets were due to open in Asia.

U.S. equity index futures dropped late on Sunday as electronic trading resumed to kick off a holiday-shortened week.

In early trading, the benchmark S&P 500’s e-mini futures contract was off by about a quarter of a percent.

The Treasury said in a statement that Mnuchin talked with the chief executives of Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

“The CEOs confirmed that they have ample liquidity available for lending,” the Treasury said.

Mnuchin “also confirmed that they have not experienced any clearance or margin issues and that the markets continue to function properly,” the Treasury said.

Mnuchin’s calls to the bankers came amid a partial government shutdown that began on Saturday following an impasse in Congress over Trump’s demand for more funds for a wall on the border with Mexico. Financing for about a quarter of federal government programs expired at midnight on Friday and the shutdown could continue to Jan. 3.

The Treasury said Mnuchin will convene a call on Monday with the president’s Working Group on Financial Markets, which includes Washington’s main stewards of the U.S. financial system and is sometimes referred to as the “Plunge Protection Team.”

The group, which was also convened in 2009 during the latter stage of the financial crisis, includes officials from the Federal Reserve as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wall Street is also closely following reports that Trump has privately discussed the possibility of firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Mnuchin said on Saturday Trump told him he had “never suggested firing” Powell.

Trump has criticized the U.S. central bank for raising interest rates this year, which could further dampen economic growth. The Fed’s independence is seen as a pillar of the U.S. financial system.

Mnuchin’s calls come as a range of asset classes have suffered steep losses.

In December alone, the S&P 500 is down nearly 12.5 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite has slumped 13.6 percent. The Nasdaq is now in a bear market, having declined nearly 22 percent from its record high in late August, and the S&P is not far off that level.

Corporate credit markets have been under duress as well, and measures of the investment grade corporate bond market are poised for their worst yearly performance since the 2008 financial crisis.

The high-yield bond market, where companies with the weakest credit profiles raise capital, has not seen a deal all month.

The last time that happened was in November 2008.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A White House official says tension between a president and the interest-rate setting Federal Reserve is “traditional as part of our system.”

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says it should come as no surprise that President Donald Trump is unhappy the central bank, an independent agency, “is raising rates and we think driving down the value of the stock market.”

Speculation about the fate of Trump’s appointed Fed chairman, Jerome Powell, has swirled after Bloomberg News reported that Trump discussed firing Powell after this past week’s rate increase.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tweeted Saturday that Trump has denied ever suggesting that and doesn’t believe he has the right to dismiss Powell.

Mulvaney also tells ABC’s “This Week” that the economy’s “fundamentals are still strong.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

China and the United States held a vice ministerial-level call on Friday, the second such contact in a week, achieving a “deep exchange of views” on trade imbalances and the protection of intellectual property, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said.

A statement posted on the ministry’s website on Sunday said the two countries “made new progress” on those issues, without specifying further.

It also said China and the United States discussed arrangements for the next call and mutual visits.

On Wednesday, the ministry said Beijing and Washington had held a vice ministerial-level telephone call about trade and economic issues, without providing other details.

The calls took place amid signs of a thaw in a trade dispute between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this month agreed to a truce that delayed the planned Jan. 1 U.S. increase of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods while they negotiate a trade deal.

Chinese Commerce Ministry officials indicated earlier the two countries were in close contact over trade, and any U.S. trade delegation would be welcome to visit.
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From: MeNeedIt

In 2018, sitting leaders relinquished power in South Africa and Ethiopia. Zimbabwe elected a new leader after 37 years of rule by former President Robert Mugabe. Peaceful power transitions were also seen in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali. But while many find those trends encouraging, the opposite is also true in countries where some of world’s longest serving leaders continue to hold power. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports on the overall trends that are sparking both hope and worry.
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From: MeNeedIt

A Venetian cloth dyer’s son, Tintoretto spent his entire career in Venice, becoming widely considered the last great painter of the Renaissance.

The lagoon city’s churches and palazzi essentially serve as a permanent retrospective of this native son’s formidable talents in using dramatic color, bold brushstrokes and daringly innovative perspective on often-enormous canvasses.

Still, curators here have encountered challenges when mounting tributes this year to mark the 500th anniversary of his birth.

Some of Tintoretto’s paintings couldn’t be included in the main exhibition, hosted at the landmark Palazzo Ducale (Doges’ Palace), because they couldn’t fit through its 16th-century stone doorways.

And several Venetian churches, where the painter did much of his best work, balked at loaning their masterpieces. Not surprisingly, they are eager for visitors making the Tintoretto pilgrimage to visit their venues and not just the stellar show, which, since opening in September, has drawn more than 100,000 visitors.

​On to Washington

After it closes here Jan. 6, the exhibition travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington for a four-month run starting March 10. That will be the first Tintoretto retrospective outside of Europe.

When Venice last hosted a Tintoretto retrospective, in 1937, church paintings were cut out of their frames, rolled up and carted off to the exhibition. That method would be met with horror by today’s art world, especially since nearly a score of Tintoretto paintings were recently restored, thanks to the Save Venice organization.

“The churches generally felt, and we understood, it didn’t make sense to move his masterpieces across the city,” said Robert Echols, a Boston-based art historian who is one of the curators. Some of those church works will go to the U.S. exhibition, however.

Weeding out impostors

Some of Tintoretto’s greatest works can never travel, of course, and are being celebrated here.

In the Chapter House in the Scuola di San Rocco, admirers can lie on their backs to see Tintoretto’s work, which has been likened to the monumental achievement of Michelangelo in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Thanks to new lighting and strategically placed mirrors, the Chapter House last month had its own renaissance of sorts. Now visitors can see details in what before had seemed like a gloomy, cavernous room.

Echols and co-curator Frederick Ilchman, chair of European art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, devoted much of their art historian careers to weeding out paintings that had been dubiously attributed to Tintoretto, whittling down what had been a list of 468 works to just more than 300 paintings of his authorship.

“Tintoretto, to some extent, is a painter who was a victim of his own success,” Echols said.

Tintoretto, a pseudonym of Jacopo Rubusti, obtained so many commissions, particularly in his later years, that he farmed out some work, notably to his son, Domenico. While his genius was acknowledged in his own day, some works done by imitators or his workshop had been incorrectly attributed to Tintoretto in successive centuries.

Tintoretto cleverly maneuvered to snag commissions from nobles and churches during the heady years of the sea-going Most Serene Republic of Venice.

“The Shakespeare play is not the ‘Merchant of Florence,’ it’s the ‘Merchant of Venice,’” Ilchman noted, recounting how Tintoretto sometimes offered discounts to ensure commissions didn’t go to his rivals, which included Tiepolo, Titian and Veronese.

Scandalous at times

Tintoretto’s imaginative use of perspective and his dynamic, inventive interpretations of mythological and religious themes are on convincing display, including one that sparked scandal in his day. In “St. Louis, St. George and The Princess,” a dragon’s head emerges from between the legs of a woman and from under her billowing, burnt-orange gown.

In the “The Abduction of Helen,” the kidnapped woman, with a nipple poking out above her blouse, seems to be tumbling out of the frame toward the viewer.

Tintoretto had an impressive production of portraits. The exhibition displays many of his finest in a long, narrow hall, as if in a noble family’s own palazzo.

Riveting self-portraits — one of Tintoretto in his 20s on loan by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and another of Tintoretto as an old man sent by the Louvre — open and close the retrospective.

The Venice show to honor Tintoretto’s birth anniversary began in 2018. The companion Washington show starts in 2019. The different years are fitting, for, while the year of his death, 1594, is undisputed, and his grave prominent in a Venice church decorated with some of his masterpieces, historians aren’t sure just when he was born. The artist’s birth year is often written as 1518/1519.
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From: MeNeedIt

It was another miserable day on Wall Street as a series of big December plunges continued, putting stocks on track for their worst month in a decade.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 464 points Thursday, bringing its losses to more than 1,700 points since Friday.

The benchmark S&P 500 index has slumped 10.6 percent this month and is almost 16 percent below the peak it reached in late September.

The steady gains of this spring and summer now fell like a distant memory. As we’ve entered the fall, investors started to worry that global economic growth is cooling off and that the U.S. could slip into a recession in the next few years. The S&P 500 is on track for its first annual loss in a decade.

The technology stocks that have led the market in recent years are now dragging it down. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite is now down 19.5 percent from the record high it reached in August.

The market swoon is coming even as the U.S. economy is on track to expand this year at the fastest pace in 13 years. Markets tend to move, however, on what investors anticipate will happen well into the future, so it’s not uncommon for stocks to sink even when the economy is humming along.

Slowing economy a concern

Right now, markets are concerned about the potential for a slowing economy and two threats that could make the situation worse: the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and China, which has lasted most of this year, and rising interest rates, which act as a brake on economic growth by making it more expensive for businesses and individuals to borrow money.

The selling in the last two days came after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the fourth time this year and signaled it was likely to continue raising rates next year, although at a slower rate than it previously forecast.

Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said investors felt Fed Chairman Jerome Powell came off as unconcerned about the state of the U.S. economy, despite deepening worries on Wall Street that growth could slow even more in 2019 and 2020. Wren said investors want to know that the Fed is keeping a close eye on the situation.

“He may be a little overconfident,” said Wren. “The Fed needs to be paying attention to what’s going on.”

Powell also acknowledged that the Fed’s decisions are getting trickier because they need to be based on the most up-to-date figures on jobs, inflation, and economic growth. For the last three years the Fed told investors weeks in advance that it was almost certain to increase rates. But things are less certain now, and the market hates uncertainty

‘Completely overblown’

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the market’s reaction to the Fed was “completely overblown.”

Investors have responded to a weakening outlook for the U.S. economy by selling stocks and buying ultra-safe U.S. government bonds. The bond-buying has the effect of sending long-term bond yields lower, which reduces interest rates on mortgages and other kinds of long-term loans. That’s generally good for the economy.

At the same time, the reduced bond yields can send a negative signal on the economy. Sharp drops in long-term bond yields are often seen as precursors to recessions.

The S&P 500 index skidded 39.54 points, or 1.6 percent, to 2,467.42. The Dow fell 464.06 points, or 2 percent, to 22,859.60 after sinking as much as 679.

The Nasdaq fell 108.42 points, or 1.6 percent, to 6,528.41. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies dropped another 23.23 points, or 1.7 percent, to 1,326.

Stocks for smaller companies suffer

Smaller company stocks have been crushed during the recent market slump because slower growth in the U.S. will have an outsize effect on their profits. Relative to their size, they also tend to carry more debt than larger companies, which could be a problem in a slower economy with higher interest rates.

The Russell 2000 is down almost 24 percent from the peak it reached in late August and it’s down 13.6 percent for the year to date. The S&P 500, which tracks larger companies, is down 7.7 percent.

The possibility of a partial shutdown of the federal government also loomed over the market on Thursday, as funding for the government runs out at midnight Friday. In general, shutdowns don’t affect the U.S. economy or the market much unless they stretch out for several weeks, which would delay paychecks for federal employees.

Oil prices still dropping 

Oil prices continued to retreat. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 4.8 percent to $45.88 a barrel in New York, and it’s dropped 40 percent since early October. Brent crude, used to price international oils, slipped 5 percent to $54.35 a barrel in London.

After early gains, bond prices headed lower. The yield on the two-year Treasury rose to 2.87 percent from 2.65 percent, while the 10-year note rose to 2.80 percent from 2.77 percent.

The gap between those two yields has shrunk this year. When the 10-year yield falls below the two-year yield, investors call it an “inverted yield curve.” That hasn’t happened yet, but investors fear it will. Inversions are often taken as a sign a recession is coming, although it’s not a perfect signal and when recessions do follow inversions in the yield curve, it can take a year or more.

“The bond market has been telling us something for about a year, and that is there’s not going to be much inflation and there’s not going to be a sustained surge in economic growth,” said Wren, of Wells Fargo.

Around the world

In France, the CAC 40 lost 1.8 percent and Germany’s DAX fell 1.4 percent. The British FTSE 100 slipped 0.8 percent. Indexes in Italy, Portugal and Spain took bigger losses.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 lost 2.8 percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gave up 1 percent. Seoul’s Kospi shed 0.9 percent.

As investors adjusted to the prospect of a weaker economy and lower long-term interest rates, the dollar fell to 111.11 yen from 112.36 yen. The euro rose to $1.1469 from $1.1368.

The British pound rose to $1.2671 from $1.2621. That sent the price of gold higher, and it gained 0.9 percent to $1,267.9 an ounce. Silver rose 0.3 percent to $14.87 an ounce and copper, which is considered an indicator of economic growth, fell 0.7 percent to $2.70 a pound.

Other fuel prices also fell. Wholesale gasoline lost 4.6 percent to $1.32 a gallon and heating oil slid 3.1 percent to $1.75 a gallon. Natural gas gave up 3.8 percent to $3.58 per 1,000 cubic feet. 
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.S.-China trade war is spooking potential investors in soybean crushing plants planned for Wisconsin and New York state, developers said, casting doubt on the future of a sector that had been a rare bright spot in the U.S. farm economy.

Crushers in the United States have been posting near-record profits by snapping up cheap and plentiful soybeans no longer purchased by China and making soymeal and soy oil for export to Europe and Southeast Asia.

But margins are not predictable as the United States and China attempt to resolve their trade differences before a March 2 deadline, adding another puzzle as investors parse out the costs and impacts of a trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

WSBCP LLC, or the Wisconsin Soybean Crushing Plant, is struggling to find backers for the state’s first soy processing facility because of uncertainty in agricultural and financial markets over the trade conflict, said Phil Martini, chief executive of industrial contractor C.R. Meyer & Sons Co, who is overseeing the project.

“I’m not a mental giant, but it doesn’t take one to think people are uncertain about what’s going on,” Martini said. “The crush margin is very good, but it can go the other way.”

China bought about 60 percent of U.S. raw soybean exports last year in deals worth $12 billion, but has mostly been buying beans from Brazil since imposing a 25 percent tariff on American soybeans in July in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed on Dec. 1 not to impose additional tariffs for 90 days, a truce that spurred Chinese purchases of a few million tons of U.S. soybeans this month.

It is unclear when or if Beijing will remove its soy tariff, a move that would spur more deals and lift U.S. soybean prices in a boon to U.S. farmers and a blow to crushing margins.

Construction on the $150 million plant in Waupun, Wisconsin, is set to begin in 2019, with a projected opening in 2020, according to a June statement from the city, which owns the land where the facility would be located.

Martini said it remains to be seen whether the timetable needs to be postponed. He is also looking for livestock producers to commit to buying the plant’s products.

Kathy Schlieve, Waupun’s economic director, said the project would likely be delayed because the investor pool is not finalized.

“It’s different dynamic and we’re really trying to understand that,” Schlieve said about the trade war.

Shift from 2017

The uncertainty is a turnaround from last year when farmer-owned agricultural cooperatives were building new soybean crushing plants at the fastest rate in two decades after several years of large crops.

U.S. grain merchant Archer Daniels Midland Co set a new record for crush volumes in the third quarter and benefited from strong margins.

But after months of soybean futures prices hovering around 10-year lows due to the lack of Chinese buying, farmers have little room for new ventures.

“There isn’t a lot of extra money out there to invest in something like that,” said John Heisdorffer, an Iowa farmer and chairman of the American Soybean Association.

New York plant

The trade war also prolonged the search for investors for a $54 million soybean crushing plant that St. Lawrence Soyway Company is planning for Massena, New York, near the border with Canada, CEO Doug Fisher said.

Fisher tried to win over investors worried by the trade war with charts and graphs showing how the conflict improved margins for U.S. crushing plants.

“These tariffs with China rattle them, when in fact they have increased crush plant profits,” Fisher said.

As of Wednesday, the company had raised about 85 percent of the total, Fisher said.

St. Lawrence Soyway’s plant is projected to process soybeans into feed for dairy cows. The livestock industry has also been hit by Chinese tariffs on dairy products and pork, though.

“As those farmers are not doing as well, their ability to buy meal at higher prices is not there,” Fisher said.
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From: MeNeedIt