U.S. imports of Mexican sugar are now estimated near 1.09 million metric tons (MMT) for 2016/17, down around 115,000 metric tons (MT) from the previous season, a 9-percent-plus decline. If realized, this import figure for 2016/17 would represent a fall of more than 43 percent from the high import volumes seen in 2012/13 and 2013/14. Import volumes in those years were not coincidentally matched with lower U.S. sugar production—particularly in 2013/14. The sugar trade between the U.S. and Mexico then had been both integrated and liberalized under NAFTA—all before the highly regimented arrangement under the amended Suspension Agreements now in place, of course.

For 2017/18, USDA is forecasting that imports of Mexican sugar will jump by nearly 50 percent, all contingent on a bigger sugarcane crop from Mexico and no new upheavals in the U.S.-Mexico sweetener market. After the last few turbulent years, neither of those elements might yet be called a “sure thing.” We will be monitoring harvest and processing on both sides of the border in this new season.

U.S. cumulative monthly imports of Mexican sugar

Posted by: Information Services
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