Lost Soybean Sales to China Continue to Climb

In May, we reported on accumulated losses of U.S. soybean sales to China that seemed to coincide with trade announcements. A lot has happened on the trade front over the last six weeks, so we wanted to check back in on 2017/2018 U.S. soybean sales. According to the latest USDA export sales data released on July 6, covering trade through June 28, total lost soybean sales have now exceeded 5 million metric tons. This is more than 2 million metric tons higher than cancellations the same point in the 2016/2017 marketing year and more than 1 million metric tons higher than the level of cancellations throughout the entire 2016/2017 marketing year. In the unlikely event that no more cancellations occur, and the U.S. ships the remaining 772 million metric tons in outstanding sales to China, U.S. soybean sales for the fully 2017/2018 marketing year will be more than 8.5 million metric tons below 2016/2017, a decline of more than 23 percent.