Corn Falling on Thursday Amid Weaker Export Business and Tariff Concerns

Corn futures are in free-fall mode on Thursday, with contracts down 5 to 12 cents, led by the nearby months. Pressure is coming from a possible tariff threat this next week and weaker export business. CmdtyView’s national average Cash Corn price is 11 ½ cents lower at $4.35 1/2. 

Yesterday there was a report that President Trump had pushed back the date for the 25% tariff implementation on Mexico and Canada to April 2, rather than March 4. However, this morning he corrected that, stating he misspoke, with the Mex/Can tariffs still on for next Tuesday and the reciprocal tariffs going on in April.

Weekly Export Sales data from this morning showed just 794,694 MT in corn bookings below the 0.9-1.65 MMT estimates for old crop corn during the week of 2/20. That was the lowest total in 7 weeks. Mexico was the largest buyer of 378,800 MT, with Columbia buying 184,300 MT. New crop sales totaled 128,000 MT, above the estimated 0-100,000 MT. 

USDA’s Outlook Forum numbers released this morning showed corn acreage estimated at 94 million acres by Office of the Chief Economist, up 3.4 million from last year. It is important to note this is not a survey driven number, with that data coming in the March Intentions report. Their balance sheet used a 181 bpa ‘weather adjusted’ trend yield, with a projected carryout of 1.965 billion bushels.  

A couple South Korean importers purchased a total of 198,000 MT of optional origin corn overnight.

Mar 25 Corn is at $4.66 1/2, down 11 3/4 cents,

Nearby Cash is at $4.35 1/2, down 11 1/2 cents,

May 25 Corn is at $4.82, down 11 1/2 cents,

Dec 25 Corn is at $4.61 1/4, down 5 3/4 cents,

New Crop Cash is at $4.28 1/2, down 7 cents,