2025 Top 100 Importers & Exporters

Uncertain trade environment especially fraught for US ag shippers

By Bill Mongelluzzo

“ China plays this game at multiple levels,” Swofford said. Containerized exports of US agricultural products totaled 1.5 million TEUs in 2024. That was up 6.2 % from 2023 but down 2.4 % from 2019, according to PIERS, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global. In the first two months of 2025, shipments have slipped 6.4 % compared with the same period last year.

China’ s share of total US ag exports in 2024 was 15.8 %, down from just under 21 % in 2023 and the most recent five-year high of 23.7 % in 2022, according to PIERS.

Still,“ ag shippers are more exposed to China than other sectors,” said Paul Bingham, director of transportation consulting for S & P Global Market Intelligence.

Losing the largest market

In its ongoing tariff standoff with the US, China is targeting specific US export sectors but oftentimes does not tariff those same products from other countries that may be direct competitors of the US, giving other countries a competitive pricing advantage, Bingham said.

“ The power of predictability is compromised. I would rather service be consistently good than occasionally exceptional.”

US exporters of agricultural products will have to navigate a minefield of tariffs, supply chain challenges and phytosanitary restrictions through the balance of 2025 as they seek to protect access to existing overseas markets and develop new ones.

Shippers of grains, cotton, hay, fruits, nuts and forest products will face, by far, their greatest obstacles in China, which is engaged in a full-blown trade dispute with the Trump administration. China, still the top destination for US agricultural exports, is deploying a multi-faceted attack on US ag shippers in retaliation for the huge tariffs the US has implemented on imports from China.

In addition to levying tariffs as high as 125 % on imports of US agricultural and forest products, China is restricting or eliminating imports of certain products due to phytosanitary concerns. US log exports are a prime example, said Hayden Swofford, independent administrator of the Pacific Northwest Asia Shippers Association, whose members include forest products shippers.

China had been tariffing forest products from the US at 5 % to 12.5 % based on the origin points in the US, but then in March it banned the importation of all US forest products due to concerns over the alleged infestation of bark beetles.

China has levied retaliatory tariffs of up to 125 % on US ag exports. Shutterstock. com

Agricultural products

EXPORTS

1,530,713 TEUS

↑6.2 %

Change from 2023

↓0.5 %

5-year compound annual growth rate

That scenario played out in 2018 when President Donald Trump levied tariffs on imports from China, which responded with tariffs on US ag products. US hay exporters had to seek markets in other countries to replace the sales it lost in China, said Scot Courtright, COO of Washington state-based Courtright Enterprises, which specializes in the logistics and export of forage. A shift in destination markets can result in logistical problems, Courtright said. European hay exporters seven years ago increased their shipments to China, but as a result they had less hay to ship to their existing markets in the Middle East. As a result, US hay exporters stepped up their exports to the Middle East, Courtright said.

But while China has extensive liner services from the US, destinations in the Middle East do not.“ Getting vessel space to the Middle East is difficult, and the shipment can be transshipped two or three times,” Courtright said.

Tariff and trade frictions between the US and China will be especially harmful for cotton exporters, said Buddy Allen, president and CEO of the American Cotton Shippers Association.

“ It is possible that China can go from being the largest market for US cotton to the smallest,” Allen said.

And soybean exporters now face a major issue of replacing China, the largest market for US soybean exports, with multiple, smaller shipments to other countries, said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soybean Transportation Coalition.

“ China is number one, but it’ s less viable now,” he said.

44 Journal of Commerce | May 5, 2025 www. joc. com