Fundamentally Speaking

Economists say there are no winners in a trade war other than governments as they collect the tariff fees as both producer and consumer welfare are reduced.

There are plenty of losers as the future is uncertain after President Trump slapped tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, the top three markets for American farm products that imported a total of $91 billion in U.S. agricultural goods and related products in 2024.

Some crop commodities may fare better than others as a quick look at the volume of exports as a percent of production for key U.S. crop commodities over the past 15 years suggests that sorghum and soybeans have the most to lose with soybean meal also quite vulnerable though all markets will suffer.

Since 2010, sorghum exports as a percentage of their production have averaged 54% of output as two years ago over three-quarters of our output was shipped overseas.

Sorghum also has the most positive trend as exports as a percent of production have been increasing at a 1.6% rate over the past 15 years.

Soybean exports as a percentage of their production have averaged 46.3% of output, staying steady even though our share of global trade has slipped quite precipitously over the years.

Corn exports as a percent of output also trended flat at just 14.3%, though the share of exports as a percentage of production had risen slowly at a 0.3% rate as has been the case for soybean meal.

Wheat exports as a percent of production have averaged 48.1% since 2000, though declining at a 0.5% rate with soybean oil seeing the largest downward trend of 0.6% per year with our bean oil exports having averaged just 8.6% of production.

(c) Copyright 2025 DTN, LLC. All rights reserved.