[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 4, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6844-S6845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 CHINA

  Mr. KING. Madam President, there is a wonderful guy who lives in 
Maine named David Mallett. He has a keen ear and an eye for the rural 
parts of our country, and one of his most famous songs starts out like 
this: ``Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All it 
takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.''
  The problem is, what we have now is rakes, hoes, a piece of fertile 
ground,

[[Page S6845]]

and we have seeds and crops, but we have an administration that ties 
the hands of our farmers at every turn, particularly the blueberry 
farmers in Maine.
  Blueberries have been exported from Maine since the 1840s, and the 
people who are in this farming business are tough and resilient. They 
don't want bailouts; they want to be able to sell their product on the 
market.
  It is a wonderful product, by the way. If you ever have an 
opportunity to choose between blueberries and wild blueberries, choose 
wild blueberries. They are better for you, and they taste better.
  In recent years, the market for blueberries has been very difficult 
because of imports from Canada and additional cultivated blueberries 
from around the country, so our farmers, being entrepreneurial and 
doing what we have been telling them to do for years, have gone big 
time into the export market. Where is a great place to export to? 
China.
  I used to say as Governor that if we could get the Chinese hooked on 
blueberry muffins--just one a day--all of our problems would be over, 
and the Maine wild blueberries were getting to that point. Two years 
ago, $2.5 million a year of blueberries were going to China and half of 
the budget of the Wild Blueberry Export Commission was going to develop 
the Chinese market. Hours and hours, days, dollars--a lot of effort 
went to develop this Chinese market. Then all of a sudden came the 
Trump administration tariffs.
  Not surprisingly--it seems surprising to the administration--but not 
surprising to anybody who has paid attention to 500 years of trade, the 
immediate response to those tariffs was retaliatory tariffs by the 
Chinese, and one of the first ones was an 80-percent tariff on wild 
blueberries. We were doing pretty well. From 2014 to 2017, exports to 
China quadrupled to $2.5 million. This year they are $61,000. We have 
the trade war. It is well known that we have tariffs that are applying 
to all kinds of agricultural products.
  The response from the administration was a massive bailout--a bailout 
which has now reached something like three times the dollar value of 
the bailout of the automobile industry back at the beginning of the 
Obama administration when we almost lost that entire industry. We are 
now heading toward three times that amount. A lot of the bailout to the 
automobile industry was paid back. This is not a bailout that is going 
to be paid back. It has continued to just be paid out to various 
farmers across the country.
  I am sure the farmers in the Midwest, just as the farmers in Maine, 
don't want bailouts. They want sales. They want to sell their product 
in the market, which they have been doing, but what has happened is we 
have this bailout, and I call it the farm bailout lottery. I don't have 
a spinner on here, but it is a lottery because we don't know and we 
don't understand and nobody can tell us why certain crops are in and 
certain crops are out. Round and round she goes; where she stops, 
nobody knows--and that is the problem. What is in? Well, let's see. 
Cranberries are in. Blueberries are out--zip, zero, nothing. Soybeans 
are in. Wheat is in. Apples are out. Here is what else is in, and tell 
me if this makes any sense: dairy, hogs, almonds, cranberries, ginseng, 
grapes, cherries. All these are in. These are getting the bailout 
money. Some farms are getting over $500,000: hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, 
pecans, pistachios, and walnuts but not blueberries and, for some 
reason, not apples.
  We have a double whammy here on this proud industry from Maine. 
First, there is the Chinese tariff war, of which we are collateral 
damage. By the way, the same problem is going on with lobsters. They 
were one of the first products to be retaliated against by the Chinese. 
We lost that export market, and now the same thing is happening in 
these agricultural products. It is a double whammy. No. 1, we got hit 
by the retaliatory tariffs, and No. 2, we are not in on the bailout. We 
are not in on the funds that are being distributed. Nobody can tell us 
what the formula is, what the rationale is. Is it who has the biggest, 
most powerful lobby in Washington? Is it if you are from a State that 
voted for the President in 2016? What is the rationale? We can't tell 
what that is.
  The President just said yesterday this trade war with China may go on 
for another year. That means another crop. We have third- and fourth-
generation blueberry farmers in Maine leaving the land. It is 
heartbreaking. These aren't big enterprises. These aren't big 
operations. These are people with 100-acre farms.
  The administration knows about this because I and my colleagues from 
Maine wrote them in July and asked this question. Wild blueberry should 
be included in what is called the Market Facilitation Program. It 
didn't happen. We still don't really know what the criteria is. Just to 
put a fine point on it, if you are a wild blueberry harvester with a 
100-acre farm, you get zip, zero, nada, zilch. If you are a cranberry 
farmer with a 100-acre bog, you get $61,000. How is that fair? How is 
the distinction made? That is the question we are asking.
  I have written again today to the Department of Agriculture asking 
them, A, why we aren't in and, B, how these distinctions are made. I 
don't think that is an unreasonable question when you are talking about 
people's livelihoods going back generations. These are tough people. 
These are resilient people. These are hard-working people. These are 
people who have given their lives to the land, and they deserve to be 
supported by their government--not undermined, not challenged, not 
undercut by their government.
  ``Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All it takes 
is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground'' and a government 
that supports your right to make a living at your chosen profession.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate the Senator from Maine 
speaking about the virtues of wild Maine blueberries. They happen to be 
one of my favorite foods--obviously, the lobsters as well.
  I agree with him that there appears to be an arbitrary distinction 
with these support payments that are supposed to compensate farmers for 
the trade war with China, which I think, unfortunately, is necessary to 
get China to conform to a rules-based system when it comes to 
international trade.
  Certainly, in the interest of preserving the wild Maine blueberry, I 
am happy to offer any services I might be able to provide to support 
our colleagues from Maine.

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