Lower U.S. Exports Trend Predicted

USDA Chief Economist, Seth Meyer says export values are falling while import values keep rising when it comes to U.S. agricultural goods.

“Unit value, so the price of imported goods has been rising. It's not necessarily a volume issue. But that's that is at least part of the story here imports, the value of agricultural imports are rising. And then alternatively, export values continue to fall. Meyer with some key numbers from USDA is a new forecast for agricultural trade. Exports remain at $170.5 billion. That's down 8.2 billion from 2023, which was 178 point 7 billion. So unchanged for the new forecast for 2024. But we're still down pretty sharply from the prior year. On the import side, there actually was an upward revision of imports of $1.5 billion and that's up from 195 point 4 billion the prior year. So you're talking about is $7.1 billion dollar increase in imports year over year, and a $8.2 billion decline in exports.”

USDA trends also include China buying less product from the US and Brazil buying more.