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French farmers won a battle with their government in a show of their outsize political clout, but lost the war against a European Union-South America trade deal that was a quarter-century in the making.
A qualified majority of EU states on Friday backed the trade deal with the Mercosur bloc made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. The deal would allow the EU to export more vehicles, machinery, wines and spirits to South America, while opening Europe to more imports of South American beef, sugar, rice, honey and soybeans. It creates the world’s largest free-trade area.
Farmers contend it will open up European markets to a flood of products that will undermine their ability to operate. After farmer protests in Brussels and European capitals forced a delay, EU leaders last month agreed to additional safeguards that would kick in if Europe sees a flood of farm products from South America. Those additional safeguards cleared the way for the agreement’s approval. Italy, which had forced last month’s delay, voted in favor of the deal Friday.
Meanwhile, farmers rolled into Paris in tractorcades, staging protests this week that captured the country’s attention and sympathy. French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday announced that France would vote against the pact.
Laura Darnat, who breeds horses and ponies and raises chickens in southwestern France, told France 24 television that farmers feel a sense of abandonment. “We have the best meat in Europe, we don’t need meat exported from South America,” she said. “We should be supporting our local farmers, not farmers from abroad.”
French farmers, like their U.S. counterparts, are vastly outnumbered by the urban population. French farmers have a long history of taking to the streets, staging tractorcades and other types of demonstrations in a political culture where mass protests are more common and viewed as a more legitimate form of discourse.
Their clout was enhanced by the fragile state of the French government. While the protests were organized by the right-wing Coordination Rurale union, opposition to the agreement has united politicians across the political spectrum, wrote Politico, adding that France’s inability to halt the agreement “allows opposition parties to twist their knives into an already weakened Emmanuel Macron for the rest of his presidency.”
Jobs market cooled in December… U.S. jobs growth slowed in December, with U.S. nonfarm payrolls rising by 50,000, down from 56,000 in November and below the 73,000 forecast by economists. The unemployment rate fell back to 4.4% from a downwardly revised 4.5% in November. The fall in the jobless rate “simply reads as relief…and it should douse the Fed’s recent urgency to backstop a weakening labor market,” said Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings. “That said, the weak headline job-growth story can’t be brushed aside. Hiring is still stuck in stall speed, and job growth in the cyclical parts of the economy aren’t sending a comforting signal.”
‘Uninvestable’... That was the term used by ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods to describe Venezuela barring “significant changes,” the Financial Times reported, in contrast to President Donald Trump’s call for massive investment in the country’s oil resources. “If we look at the legal and commercial constructs, frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable, and so significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system,” Woods said. Oil executives met with Trump at the White House Friday, with most stopping short of pledging publicly to quickly invest, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Trump told the executives that the U.S. government would provide the companies with security guarantees, but it was clear he wanted oil producers to push into the country, the report said. At the start of the meeting, Trump said he intends U.S. oil companies to spend at least $100 billion in Venezuela to boost oil production.
Betting markets still favor tariff strikedown… Anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of Trump’s sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs on Friday was met with disappointment. Attention now turns to Wednesday, when the high court has indicated it will issue more rulings. The Supreme Court never says in advance what cases it will be ruling on. The lack of a ruling on Friday sparked a short-lived jump in the probability of a ruling in the Trump administration’s favor on betting markets. A “yes” contract, which pays out if the Supreme Court backs the tariffs, jumped to 32 cents on Polymarket from around 26 cents, reflecting a rise in market-based probability to 32%. But it quickly fell back, trading at 26 cents late Friday.
Get ready for Monday’s USDA data deluge… Monday marks one of the biggest report days of the year, with an update on USDA’s production figures for 2025 and a look at how demand held up in the first quarter of the marketing year. Final corn yield estimates are in the spotlight, but there will be plenty to unpack on both the supply and demand side for major commodities.
Check out Pro Farmer’s breakdown of the key things to watch in your weekly newsletter or here: What You Need To Know About USDA’s Jan. 12 WASDE, Crop Production and Stocks Reports