Didion Weekly Market Recap
The markets were rejuvenated late last week with indications that tariffs on Chinese vessels may be delayed until this fall. Thursday’s rally helped May and July futures close 5 and 4 cents higher for the week while December futures ended the week unchanged. The funds ended the week long 96,430 corn and short 12,984 soybean contracts.
Rumors on Thursday that the proposed timeline for tariffs on Chinese vessels may be delayed appeared to be accurate as the following timelines were released:
– March 24, 2025: A public hearing will be held to gather comments on the proposed actions
– April 17, 2025: The deadline for completing findings and finalizing the rule.
– Mid-May 2025: An implementation hearing will take place to finalize the decision, approximately 30 days after the previous deadline.
– November 2025 (proposed): If the White House’s suggested 180-day implementation period is adopted, enforcement of the tariffs or fees would be delayed until around November 2025.
These dates indicate that the United States Trade Representative (USTR) tariffs or fees on Chinese tonnage won’t come into force immediately. Instead, there will be a period of public comment, review, and potential revision before implementation. Assuming that this is accurate, the concern over old crop transactions would move to new crop. This appeared to make traders more optimistic that it will have less impact than originally feared.
There are reports that the US could potentially be trading corn into Brazil out of the gulf. While the volumes would be minimal, due to logistics, it does send a message to the world that US corn is cheap. Recent values suggest that the US is $20/ton cheaper than the world market. Weekly exports were strong this past week with 58.9 million bushels sold. We continue to run ahead of the USDA’s projections for the year by 182 million bushels (7%).
Tariffs and the talk of increased US planted acres have pushed the market lower since the first week of February, but they appear to have found support levels in the last two weeks. There will be a lot of market movers in the next 10 days with the March 31st planting intentions, April 2nd reciprocal tariffs and South American weather. It appears that traders are headed for the sidelines until there is more confirmation of some if not all these unknowns. US stocks are stable and correctly priced if the tariffs are implemented. If tariffs are delayed again, we could see traders begin to take on longer positions as the fear of trade wars will lessen.
Upcoming reports
| Date | Report |
| 3/31/2025 | Grain Stocks/Prospective Plantings |
| 4/9/2025 | Crop Production |
