Posted on April, 15, 2025 at 07:28 pm
Once the dominant supplier of grains and oilseeds on the world stage, the United States has watched its market share dwindle in recent decades.
In 1980, the United States accounted for 44% of global wheat exports; today that total is just 11%. Over the last five years, the US corn export market share has fallen to a record-low 31%, down from a high of above 80% in the 1970s. Once the leader in soybean exports, the United States has watched Brazil supplant it; it now accounts for only 27% of soybean shipments compared to 80% five decades ago.
And now, amid another trade war with China, the world’s largest soybean importer, and other countries that import US ag products, that downward spiral may continue.
In March, US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, his social-media platform, that US agricultural producers should prepare to “start making a lot of agricultural products to be sold INSIDE of the United States.”
Sounds simple enough, but it flies in the face of reality. The United States currently exports about 25% of the grain it produces each year, including more than half of its soybeans. Even with domestic industrial uses of grain steadily climbing in recent years, the percentage of bulk ag commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, sorghum, pulses and cotton) shipped overseas has been trending higher, including a 22% increase last year, the biggest year-on-year increase in more than a decade.
Finding additional domestic demand drivers for grains and oilseeds is possible, perhaps with increased biofuel use such as Sustainable Aviation Fuel or some other industrial use that has yet to be discovered. But even in a best-case scenario, it takes years for these new markets to develop.
One of the long-term impacts of trade wars, even after they end, is a loss of reputation as a reliable supplier on the global market, something that can take years to repair. Countries that have no choice but to rely on grain imports to feed their people not only consider cost and quality, but they also want stable trading partners that deliver products in a consistent manner year by year, without disruption.
It took the United States a long time to be viewed as a reliable supplier following grain embargoes in the 1970s and 80s. The same thing has happened with soybean exports following the US-China trade war from 2018-20, as China has shifted to Brazil as its primary soybean supplier.
The recent trade wars have not only fueled more conflict and mistrust between the world’s two major economic powers, but relationships between the United States and its allies like the European Union, Canada and Mexico have been strained by Trump’s freewheeling tariff policies.
Once the dust settles in this latest trade war, perhaps another era of free trade will begin. Until then, with tariffs and counter-tariffs flying back and forth between countries, what we’re witnessing is a race to the bottom with mostly losers and very few winners.
Source: World Grain