As Trump trashes Nafta, Mexico turns to Brazil
Mexican buyers imported ten times more corn from Brazil last year amid concern that Nafta renegotiations could disrupt their US supplies, according to government data and top grains merchants. Mexico is on track to buy more Brazilian corn in 2018, which would hurt a US agricultural sector already struggling with low grains prices and the rising competitive threat from South America.
US farmers, food processors and grain traders have spent months trying to prevent trade relationships from falling apart if the North American Free Trade Agreement implodes.
They are trying to protect more than $19 billion in sales to Mexican buyers of everything from corn and soybeans to dairy and poultry.
Despite their efforts, South American corn shipments to Mexico are surging. Mexican buyers imported a total of more than 583,000 metric tonnes of Brazilian corn last year — a 970 per cent jump over 2016, according to Mexico’s Agrifood and Fishery Information Service.
The purchases all came in the last four months of last year. They followed visits by Mexican government officials and grains buyers to Brazil and Argentina to explore alternative supply options in the months after US President Donald Trump took office and threatened to tear up the trade pact.
Mexico has long been the top importer of US corn, and is the second largest buyer of US soybeans, giving Mexico leverage in corn-belt states that are staunch Trump supporters but also strongly back the trade status quo.
Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo, who is overseeing Mexico’s Nafta negotiating team, encouraged the country’s major grain buyers last year to explore South American corn to strengthen his hand at the negotiating table, saying the country needed a “Plan B” in case Washington pulled out of the trade deal.
Cheaper prices for Brazilian corn drove some of purchases by Mexican buyers. But in other cases, they bought Brazilian corn even when it cost more than US supplies, executives and traders said.
“We bought from Brazil for two reasons,” said Edmundo Miranda, Commercial Director of Grupo Gramosa, one of Mexico’s top grains merchants. “One, because it was competitive. Two, to see how practical and profitable it was to buy from Brazil or Argentina given the possibility of trade tariffs because of Nafta renegotiations.”
Gramosa and its domestic rival Comercializadora Portimex didn’t import any Brazilian corn in 2016. But last year, they imported nearly 260,000 metric tonnes of it — worth about $44 million at current prices — between September and December. The deals have not been previously reported.
US corn exports to Mexico also rose, despite the rapid increase in the flow from Brazil, because Mexico needed record imports in 2017 to compensate for the impact of a drought on domestic corn production.
Mexico boosted US imports by 6.6 per cent, according to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. Mexico buys far more corn from the United States than Brazil, taking 14.7 million tonnes in 2017, according to US government data.
US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that he does not see a threat from Brazil to US corn sales to Mexico because the US has the advantage of proximity and logistics.
“We have a tremendous logistical advantage to sell to Mexico, with railways going directly from the corn area to Mexico,” said Perdue, speaking at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum, in Arlington, Virginia.
He acknowledged Brazil has the advantage of being able to grow two crops per year because of more favourable weather.
Brazil continues to make inroads into US market share and Mexican purchases of Brazilian corn continued in January, rising to 100,000 metric tonnes from none a year earlier, according to Mexican government and trade sources.
Trump has said he will scrap Nafta if his administration cannot negotiate trade terms with Mexico and Canada that are more favourable to the United States. The next round of talks is later this month.
An end to Nafta, farm and trade groups say, would likely lead to increased tariffs on grains trade, hurting one of the electoral constituencies that carried Trump to power. During his campaign, Trump promised farming communities that agriculture would benefit from his presidency.
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the Trump administration aims to increase market access for US agriculture in Nafta renegotiations. US agriculture has “generally done well under Nafta,” Walters said, but “there is more work to be done.”
US agriculture industry groups have fought to keep their trade advantages since Trump took power, eager to retain tarifffree or low-tariff access when trading with Mexico, Canada and other countries.
Larger farming enterprises and trade groups involved in supplying the largest food staples are pro-Nafta. Smaller farmers have been more critical as they have struggled to compete with some of the cheaper imports that resulted from Nafta.