Lost Soybean Sales to China Continue to Climb
Published
7/22/2018
In May, we reported on accumulated losses of U.S. soybean sales to China that seemed to coincide with trade announcements. A lot has happened on the trade front over the last six weeks, so we wanted to check back on 2017/2018 U.S. soybean sales. According to Agriculture Department export sales data released on July 6, covering trade, total lost soybean sales through June 28 have now exceeded 5 million metric tons. This is more than 2 million metric tons higher than cancellations at the same point in the 2016/2017 marketing year and more than 1 million metric tons higher than the level of cancellations throughout the entire 2016/2017 marketing year. In the unlikely event that no more cancellations occur, and the U.S. ships the remaining 772 million metric tons in outstanding sales to China, U.S. soybean sales for the full 2017/2018 marketing year will be more than 8.5 million metric tons below 2016/2017, a decline of more than 23 percent.
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