VOA常速英语:As Farmers Harvest, Tariff Concerns Loom

Among the mounting concerns, Illinois farmer Bob Gurkey is juggling.He is racing against the clock to harvest his corn and soybeans. Bob spends up to 14 hours a day in the fields. Biggest concern right now of harvesting that we don’t get stuck and we get the crops out before Mother Nature throws snow at us. But his worries don’t end there. The marketers’ advice even this spring never was calling for soybeans to go down to this extreme but they weren’t thinking there was going to be a tariff. Bob is talking about Chinese tariffs on US grain products，a retaliatory move after the United States slapped tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. It’s brought down soybean prices as much as two dollars this year. That’s a big deal for a farmer who’s counting on that yield and that farm income.
伊利诺伊州农民鲍勃·古尔基在尽力应对日益增加的问题。 他在争分夺秒地收割玉米和大豆。鲍勃每天在田里工作14个小时。现在最大的问题是我们能在下雪之前把农作物收割完，收成不会受到影响。但他的担忧还不止于此。即使在今年春天，市场营销人员也从未建议将大豆价格下降到如此极端的水平，他们也没想到会有关税。鲍勃认为中国对美国谷物制品征收关税是美国对中国钢铁和铝加征关税后的一个报复性举动。这使得今年大豆价格下降了2美元。这对一个依靠产量和农场收入的农民来说是件大事。

Tamara Nelson, Senior Director of Commodities for the Illinois Farm Bureau is concerned. This is a fifth straight year of lower farm income I think the second lowest farm incomes since 2012. Nelson says news of a pending trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada to replace NAFTA so far isn’t doing much to put farmers at ease. Whether or not that was achieved because of the tariff threats remains to be seen because the steel and aluminum tariffs still remain on Mexico and Canada and their retaliatory tariffs threatened against us still remain.
伊利诺伊州农业局大宗商品高级主管塔玛拉·纳尔逊对此表示担忧。我认为这是农业收入连续第5年下降，是自2012年以来第二低的农业收入。纳尔逊说，到目前为止，美国、墨西哥和加拿大之间即将达成的贸易协定取代北美自由贸易协定的消息并没有让农民放心。是否因为关税威胁而实现这一目标仍有待观察，因为美国仍在对墨西哥和加拿大的钢铁和铝施加关税，而他们报复性关税也在威胁着我们。

Farmer Bob Gurkey had hoped decades of negotiations and relationships in China would be paying off, reversing declining farm income by keeping one of the largest markets for US soybeans open.And we built trade up to where it was working。And now within a matter of six months，a lot of that has been knocked down maybe even devastated to where will it come back how long it’s going to take to come back.The US Department of Agriculture’s twelve billion dollar aid package was supposed to be a silver lining while it helps offset his lower soybean prices.
农民鲍勃·古尔基曾希望，和中国数十年的谈判和关系将会有所进展，能通过保持美国最大大豆市场之一的开放，扭转农业收入下滑的局面。我们在运转良好的地方建立了贸易。但现在这6个月里，很多贸易都被摧毁了，甚至摧毁到一种不知道从何恢复，多久才能恢复的程度。美国农业部120亿美元的援助计划本应是一线希望，它能帮助抵消大豆价格的下跌。

They’re saying that we would get, I believe it’s a dollar sixty a dollar sixty five a bushel.Gurkey says it doesn’t help this corn, it’s a penny.Well, why even bother if you’re gonna give us a penny, that’s more a paperwork than it’s worth. And then then they’re a package what they present two hundred million is for market development.It’s like we had the market. Nice, that’s that sort of a joke.Soybeans are still being sold around the world even if they might not be going to China.Sales to Europe and Argentina are up this year, so the question remains are the trade tactics adopted by President Trump and his administration ultimately working.
他们说我们会得到，我相信是每蒲式耳1.6或1.65美元收购价。古尔基说这对玉米的收成没有什么帮助，这一价格微乎其微。但如果你要给我们这么低的价格，那干嘛还要麻烦呢，那只是表面功夫，没有实际价值。然后他们提供2亿美元用于市场开发。好像我们有市场一样。哈哈，这是个玩笑。即使大豆可能不会运往中国，它们仍在世界各地销售。今年，对欧洲和阿根廷的销售额有所上升，因此问题仍在于特朗普总统及其政府最终采取的贸易策略是否有效。

That’s probably the sixty four thousand dollars question.I think if you ask most farmers right now, they’ll say no; you ask them maybe a year from now, six months from now, it might change their mind. Six months from now, Gurkey himself will be in a very different mindset, shifting gears from harvesting his crops to planting seeds in the ground for a new growing season.A season he hopes is filled with more certainty.
这可能是一个关乎六万四千美元的问题。我想如果你现在问大多数农民这个问题，他们会说不;也许一年后六个月后你问他们，他们可能会改变主意。6个月后，古尔基他自己将会有一个很不一样的心态，从收割庄稼的心态转变为一个新的生长期在田地播种的心态。他希望这个庄稼生长期充满更多的确定性。

Kane Farabaugh VOA news Elgin Illinois
美国之音记者凯恩·法拉博报道