12/26/08 After Christmas Bargains & 2009 Exports

After Christmas Bargains & 2009 Exports. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Retailers across the country have been reporting lackluster Christmas sales and now that Christmas is over many are pulling out all the stops to try and move merchandise. The after Christmas sales rush is on and bargain hunters out in force today. Besides the downturn in the economy, bad weather conditions have caused many shoppers to shy away from the stores. It will be interesting to see how the final figures come out after the New Year. Plunging global trade could force even deeper cuts in the U-S. ag export forecast for 2009. American Farm Bureau trade adviser Dave Salmonsen agrees global conditions have worsened since USDA chopped its fiscal '09 ag export forecast by some 15-billion dollars to 98-point-5 billion earlier this month. The World Bank now predicts the first global trade decline since 1982 SALMONSEN: There's the two main components of this. One of which is some lower demand for processed food products and maybe some bulk commodities due to we're having a global recession; global down turn. And the second is direct government actions to increased tariffs or lower quotas that would impact other countries buying U.S. ag products. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.