Mexico

China will remain the leading importer of soybeans and cotton, but Mexico will be the world's largest corn importer for the rest of this decade, said the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. The United States would be the top corn exporter despite increased competition from Brazil, said the University of Missouri think tank in updating its international marketing baseline.

Mexico will buy a record $28.4 billion worth of U.S. food and agricultural exports this fiscal year, only $300 million less than China, the first-place customer, forecast the Agriculture Department on Wednesday. China is now buying more corn and soybeans from Brazil and less from the United States.

In 2021, Vicente Gomez Hernandez and Humberto Feliciano Gomez, cousins from a poor village in Oaxaca, joined the hundreds of thousands of men and women from Mexico who come to the U.S. each year on an H-2A seasonal visa to work on farms around the country. The visa is meant to be a safe and efficient alternative to illegal border crossings, a win for farmers, who need the labor, and for workers, who get much higher wages than they can earn at home. It did not turn out that way for the two cousins.

After setting a record this year, the agricultural trade deficit will balloon further, to $27.5 billion in fiscal 2024, thanks to the unyielding American appetite for fresh produce, coffee, and wine, say government forecasters. More food and ag imports will flow into the United States at the same time that farm exports shrink, led by a decline in sales to China.

The Biden administration is writing “a new story on trade” that emphasizes cooperation with allies because countries such as China have abused open markets and low tariffs, U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai said in a speech on Wednesday.

In 2019 President Donald Trump threatened to levy a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods unless the country agreed to beef up its immigration enforcement. Mexico acquiesced and deployed troops along its southern border with Guatemala, limiting the free movement of migrants. As a result, countless people have been trapped in Tapachula, a sprawling border town, in what the international press has described as an “open-air prison.”

The United States asked for technical consultations with Mexico over its agricultural biotechnology policy on Monday, the first formal step toward a challenge under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. Mexico, the leading customer for U.S. corn exports, said in mid-February that it would ban entry of GMO corn used in making tortillas but accept GMO corn intended for livestock feed and industrial processors.

In a step to defuse trade tensions with the United States, Mexico removed a looming ban on most imports of GMO corn and said it would only block genetically modified corn that would be used in making tortillas. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Tuesday the USDA was dissatisfied by the revisions.

Mexico has failed to satisfy the "grave concerns" of the United States over a potential ban on imports of U.S.-grown GMO corn said trade officials after negotiations in Mexico City on Monday. "We made it clear today that if this issue is not resolved, we will consider all options, including taking formal steps to enforce our rights under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.”

Biden administration officials refused to say more than that they were studying potential resolutions to a blossoming dispute over GMO corn exports on Wednesday, although Mexico’s agriculture minister said an informal agreement already existed. Minister Victor Villalobos claimed U.S. officials were satisfied with a proposal to delay a ban on the import of GMO corn until 2025, according to a published report.