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Widmar: No sky falling in slower corn exports to Mexico

Purdue University agriculture economist David Widmar says corn exports to Mexico are better than recent comparisons indicate.  Despite reports of fewer corn shipments to Mexico this year than last year, Widmar tells Brownfield a bigger-picture look says the sky is not falling.

“When we really step back and look at where exports are for that period over, say, the last ten or eleven years, it’s still the second highest level of exports that we’ve seen,” Widmar told Brownfield Ag News, “so we’re off the record highs set in 2016, but we’re still in pretty good spot.”

Slower U.S. corn sales to Mexico have been blamed on cooling trade relations, but Widmar says the reasons are less political than they are balance sheet driven.  He says Mexico’s corn inventory is higher now than it’s been in many years.

“It makes logical sense that exports to Mexico would slow as they’re ending stocks have been building in recent years,” he said, “so there’s definitely some sort of fundamental explanation to how this has come out.”

Even with early 2017 exports to Mexico down compared to 2016, Mexico accounts for 21 percent of total U.S. corn exports.  Mexico is part of the NAFTA trade deal that’s being renegotiated by the Trump administration.

AUDIO: David Widmar (3 min. MP3)