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NAFTA Watch: Canada & Mexico Buy 100% of South Dakota Corn & Soybean Exports

Ag industry leaders and state officials have been telling Donald Trump for months that farmers need NAFTA. But when he whined at the national Farm Bureau convention Monday, Trump said nothing new, informative, or intelligent about NAFTA, the international trade policy on which farmers depend. Whatever he’s saying to our trade partners is only making the Canadians more certain he’s going to pull out of NAFTA.

I’ve reported previously on South Dakota’s dependence on foreign markets to sell its ag goods. Today the Farm Bureau released a report showing that, in 2016, South Dakota was one of six states that sold 100% of its corn exports to our NAFTA partners.

Percentage of Corn Exports to NAFTA by State, 2016.

Likewise for our exported soybeans:

Percentage of Soybean Exports to NAFTA by State, 2016.

…and South Dakota’s exported fruits and vegetables:

Percentage of Fruit & Vegetable Exports to NAFTA by State, 2016.

South Dakota is not as dependent on NAFTA buyers in its other ag exports markets. Canada and Mexico bought only 91% of South Dakota’s beef exports, 72% of our poultry exports, 65% of our pork exports, 56% of our wheat exports, 48% of our live animal exports, and 13% of our dairy exports (I’m curious how the Canadian-owned Agropur cheese plant in Lake Norden figures into that stat).

Hey! Rural America! How does Donald Trump keep forgetting about you?

Oh well. You can always quit farming and go work at Wal-Mart.

7 Comments

  1. Roger Cornelius

    Disregarding concerns of South Dakota farmers, Trump said today that he will use the NAFTA negotiations to force Mexico to pay for his wall.

  2. Sounds more like South Dakota farmers will be paying for the wall Trump builds between farmers and markets.

  3. mike from iowa

    Kellyanne Conjob-Drumpf’s female attack dog and resident witch casually mentioned yesterday that Drumpf realized he can’t build a physical wall along the entire southern border.

    Is he going to negotiate DACA with Mexico?

  4. Roger Elgersma

    When I was farming in the eighties we started selling unit train loads of grain to the west coast. What happened to that market. Maybe Mexico sells our grain cheap to the Pacific. Or did we just totally lose that market?

  5. jerry

    I think that China will wait until the corn per bushel drops to about $1.50 a bushel, then sell it to Mexico for a nice profit. Same with Canada, China will be the middleman on how commerce will work under the new One Belt One Road by simply shipping and receiving to and from the west coasts of both countries. https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/china/chinas-one-belt-one-road-will-it-reshape-global-trade

    Both the west coast shipping ports of Canada and this new modern port in Mexico http://gcaptain.com/mexicos-900-million-mega-container/ will make shipping to and from both countries an even better deal now that Los Angeles is in deterioration. The widened Panama Canal also will make grain shipping easier to and from both countries with China as the main beneficiary. Well played trump, well played roypublicans. Be careful what you ask for.

  6. jerry

    Probably no big deal, but both Canada and Mexico export corn ad Argentina and Brazil and there ya go. http://www.worldstopexports.com/corn-exports-country/ Maybe we could just sell one another corn and soybeans and keep voting for roypublicans and the geniuses at the Farm Bureau.

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