Progress Made on U.S.- Japan Trade Deal
Capital Press – 09/25/2019
President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday announced major progress on a new trade agreement between the two countries. The Japanese Parliament is expected to approve the agreement, which mainly relates to agriculture, later this fall. It may take effect as early as Jan. 1, 2020, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. “I was actually in the room with one of the biggest millers in Japan last November and they said, ‘Absolutely no bilaterals,’ but yet here we are with a bilateral agreement,” said Darren Padget, Oregon Wheat Commission board member and vice chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates, the overseas marketing arm for the industry. “So it can be done.”
Japan to Slash Ag Tariffs, Implement New Quotas Under US Trade Deal
Agri-Pulse – 09/25/2019
About 88% of the roughly $14.1 billion worth of U.S. ag exports to Japan would be either tariff-free or receive preferential treatment once the new deal is in place, a senior U.S. government official told reporters. The pact, which is tentatively scheduled to be implemented Jan. 1, goes much of the way toward restoring the additional market access U.S. ag exporters would have gotten if the U.S. had not pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S. government officials said. While there are some exceptions – most notably rice and dairy – conditions under the new deal would put U.S. ag commodities under equal tariff treatment as ag commodities from TPP countries…Wheat growers and exporters are also pleased. “This agreement puts U.S. wheat back on equal footing with wheat from Canada and Australia that currently have a tariff advantage under a separate trade deal,” said U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) Chairman Doug Goyings.
Delayed Harvest Slows Grain Movement
The Western Producer – 09/25/2019
Slow harvest progress in Western Canada is delaying the movement of grain to prairie elevators and export terminals on the West Coast and at Thunder Bay. John Brooks, executive vice-president with Canadian Pacific Railway, told investors in Montreal that the western Canadian harvest is as much as 30 percent behind normal this year. Poor harvest weather and late maturing crops have affected CP’s grain volumes in September and will put pressure on the railway to move more grain later in the shipping year, he said. n the first three weeks of September, CP had shipped about 1,000 fewer car loads per week than normal. “The harvest, on average, in really all three provinces on the Prairies, is anywhere from … 20 to 30 percent behind where they should be or where we would expect them to be at this time of year,” Brooks said Sept. 25 at the CIBC Institutional Investors Conference.
Australian Drought to Linger Three More Months, Hurt Wheat Output
Reuters – 09/26/2019
Australia’s east coast will swelter through at least three more months of hot, dry weather, the weather bureau said on Thursday, a dire forecast for the struggling agricultural sector. Australia’s largest and most lucrative rural crop, wheat, faces the biggest damage in the third consecutive year of drought, as the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said there was just a 25% chance for average rainfall between Sep. 30 and Dec. 1. Besides being dry, the bureau said, the entire country would experience hotter-than-normal conditions, putting the chance of exceeding average temperatures during the next three months at 80%.
China Says in Close Communication With U.S. Over Oct Trade Talks
Reuters – 09/26/2019
China and the United States are still discussing details about upcoming trade talks in October, making preparations to ensure “positive progress” is made during the negotiations, the Chinese commerce ministry said on Thursday. The countries’ trade negotiators are expected to meet in Washington in about two weeks to determine if they can start to chart a path out of their bruising trade war or are headed for new and higher tariffs on each others’ goods. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday a deal to end a nearly 15-month trade war with China could happen sooner than people think and that the Chinese were making big agricultural purchases from the United States.
Source: U.S. Wheat Associates