James Mintert indicated on Monday at the farmdoc daily blog (“Weekly Outlook: NAFTA Trade Is Important for Meat Industry”) that, “The 2016 election cycle created a lot of confusion about the importance and benefits of trade in general. In particular, a good bit of the election year rhetoric focused on trade within the NAFTA trade bloc (U.S., Canada and Mexico).”
Beef
Mintert noted that, “Looking at the individual country data from USDA indicates that about 12 percent (308 million pounds) of all U.S. beef exports were shipped to Canada in 2016. The U.S. shipped even more beef to Mexico than Canada as beef exports to Mexico totaled 394 million pounds, about 15 percent of all U.S. beef exports, in 2016. Combined, the two NAFTA trading partners absorbed 27 percent of all U.S. beef exports in 2016. Looking at rankings of U.S. beef export customers, Japan (26 percent) was the largest beef export customer and South Korea (18 percent) was the second largest. Mexico and Canada were the third and fourth largest U.S. beef export customers, respectively, in 2016.”
Pork
The farmdoc update added that, “By 2016 U.S. pork exports were more than 40 times as large as in 1985, reaching a total of 5.2 billion pounds (Figure 1).”
Mintert, J. “Weekly Outlook: NAFTA Trade Is Important for Meat Industry.” farmdoc daily (7):79, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 1, 2017.
Monday’s update also pointed out that, “Looking at the individual country data, the largest single customer for U.S. pork in 2016 was Mexico. U.S. pork exports to Mexico totaled 1.6 billion pounds during 2016, which was almost 31 percent of U.S. pork exports. Pork exports to Canada in 2016 totaled 537 million pounds, approximately 10 percent of U.S pork exports. On a combined basis, Mexico and Canada absorbed approximately 41 percent of U.S. pork exports. In comparison, the next largest U.S. pork customer, Japan, received 23 percent of U.S. pork shipments in 2016.”
The farmdoc item also stated that, “[T]his review does make clear how important meat trade has become to U.S. animal agriculture producers and the potential impact a disruption in trade with NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico would have on the U.S. animal agriculture sector and, in turn, producers of feed grains and oilseeds.”
