Farmers Caught in the Middle Again

It was exactly one week ago that that corn and soybean traders were finally noticing the slowest planting pace in history. Corn and bean prices closed out the week rallying and it sure looked like the rally would continue. Sunday evening coming home from the farm I heard on the national news President Trump tweeted, unless Mexico helped control citizens of Central American Countries moving through Mexico to the U.S. southern boarder a 5 percent tariff would be put on all U.S. Imports from Mexico. Plus, tariffs would be increased in 5 percent increments to a maximum of 25 percent.

Sunday evening in the overnight session corn was under pressure trading down about 5 cents a bushel. This seemed to hang over the market all this last week. Mexico is our largest corn export market. So, of course traders assumed that we would never export another bushel of corn to Mexico! Well, during the week Mexico said they would put tariffs on U.S. products imported into Mexico. However, Mexico specifically said they would not be putting any tariffs on U.S. corn!

You sure did not see that little bit of information getting wide circulation in market and news reports. It sure seems like there is a bias to hype bearish and downplay bullish news. What ever the case, it sure looks like farmers will get caught in the middle again!