Some U.S. farmers say a Mexican lawmaker’s plans to introduce a new bill requiring the country to stop buying American corn and shift those purchases to South America seems more like tough talk than anything else.
Mexico currently buys nearly all its corn from the U.S., totaling a quarter of all U.S. corn exports. While it’s a big market, American corn farmers describe it as a mutually beneficial relationship.
“It’s not going to make sense for Mexico to buy from South America, from what they’re saying because they are going to see 10 –12 --15% increase in their costs. And, then you’re [going to] have to ship it on top of that,” Chad Etheridge, CEO of Growing America and President of Farmers for Trump, told FOX Business. “The likelihood of them actually doing that and spending an extra 15%, just because they’re unhappy with us, doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he adds.
Currently, Mexico, which is the largest buyer of U.S. corn at 27%, (surpassing Japan last year, which fell to 22%), is also getting the crop at a very cheap price as the U.S. is seeing a surplus of the commodity in recent years.
“Corn prices are now below the cost of production. There is just a lot of corn sitting around because we’ve had several good years of corn yields,” Kurt Hora, a corn farmer from Washington, Iowa and president of Iowa Corn Growers, told FOX Business.
Additionally, Mexico is able to get U.S.-grown corn quickly because of the close proximity.
“We do rail, truck and ship access for them. Yes, other markets can do this but it will be harder for them logistically. From the U.S., they can buy it in a variety of different ways in terms of volume, too,” U.S. Grains Council CEO and President Thomas Sleight told FOX Business.
Last week, during an anti-Trump protest in Mexico City, Mexican Senator Armando Rios Piter said he plans to introduce a bill requiring the country to stop buying corn from the U.S. and shift those purchases to Brazil and Argentina. Piter later told CNN that the bill is a “good way to tell [Trump] that the hostile relationship has consequences.”
more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/02/22/corn-war-u-s-farmers-say-mexico-needs-american-corn.html
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