Fundamentally Speaking

Perhaps the highlight of an otherwise blasé March WASDE report was the note from the USDA saying they considered trade policies that are in effect at the time of the publication to make their latest forecasts, and despite U.S. tariffs on Mexico and Canada being suspended, Canada's retaliatory tariffs remain in place.

These were accounted for in the WASDE estimates and are assumed to continue. U.S. tariffs on China and China's retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. are assumed to remain in place.

We don't know how much impact these had on the one market that did see balance sheet changes with U.S. wheat ending stocks hiked by a higher than expected 25 million bushels (mb).

This was based on exports lowered by 15 mb to 835 mb based on Census exports through January and expectations for sales and shipments for the remainder of the marketing year.

Similarly, USDA also boosted imports for the 2024/25 season by 10 mb to 140 mb.

This is despite the fact that U.S. wheat sales on the books as of the latest export sales report relative to the updated WASDE figure are pretty good.

This chart shows U.S. wheat export sales and shipments as of the first week of March as a percent of the USDA's March WASDE export projection on the left-hand axis.

Reported on the right-hand axis is the percent change in U.S. wheat exports from the March WASDE projection to the final figures.

Also plotted on the right-hand axis are new crop wheat sales, in this case the 2025/26 season on the books as of the first week in March as a percentage of the USDA's new crop wheat export projection given at their annual end of February Ag Outlook presentation.

This week's export sales report showed 774.6 and 566.1 mb sold and shipped as of the first week of March, both the highest in four years.

The total amount exported is actually 92.8% of this week's updated WASDE projection, and other than last year where U.S. overseas wheat sales were the lowest in more than 50 years, this is the highest percentage since March 2008.

That season wheat prices had more than tripled in price as our exports as of the first week of March were 96.7% of the March WASDE projection, the highest ever.

This apparently spurred big foreign interest in our wheat for the following year as new crop 2008/09 sales of the first week of March were already 82.7 mb, 8.7% of the USDA's 2008 February Ag Outlook wheat export projection of 950 mb and both of these are the highest figures ever.

That was in the middle of a nine-year stretch between 2003 and 2012 where final U.S. wheat exports were higher than what USDA had projected in March.

Contrast that to recent seasons where since 2018, final U.S. wheat exports have come in lower than what USDA had projected in March.

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