China Buys U.S. Beans

Every Thursday in the morning the USDA releases the Export Sales Report. It includes how many bushels or metric ton of corn, soybeans, wheat, soybean meal and oil were sold to foreign buyers. Every Monday morning the USDA releases the Export Inspections Report. That is how many bushels or metric ton of those ag commodities were actually loaded on a ship and left the United States. This report also includes the buyer and destination of the commodities.

Monday's Export Inspections report was very interesting. Two boat loads of beans were loaded, one from the Pacific Northwest, the other from New Orleans and they were headed for China! Even with the Trade War and 25 percent tariff on beans China is still buying beans from the United States. That means China still needs our beans and South America can't supply all they need.

In the July Supply Demand Report the USDA added 250 million bushel of beans to our carryover by decreasing exports to China. That sure appears to be an overly bearish projection. Plus, as as happened before, another country buys beans from the United States and turns right around and resells them to China. In addition China can buy soybean meal or soybean oil from the United States because there is no tariff on soybean products.