Headlines:

  • Trump Plans Iowa Visit Next Week to Announce Pro-Ethanol Measure Say Sources
    President Donald Trump is expected to visit Iowa next week to deliver on a promise to lift a summer ban on higher ethanol blends of gasoline, according to two sources familiar with the plan, aimed at helping Farm Belt Republicans in tight congressional election races. The move would cap months of fractious negotiations initiated by the White House over ways to help the oil industry deal with the cost of complying with the nation’s biofuel laws, without angering farmers in the nation’s heartland. Expanding sales of higher ethanol gasoline blends could help both constituencies by making it easier for the energy industry to hit annual blending quotas under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, while shoring up demand for the corn-based fuel. But the oil industry has long opposed the idea, which could cut into its market-share. The sources, who asked not to be named, said Trump plans to visit Council Bluffs, Iowa, on October 9, to announce he is directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lift the summer ban on so-called E15 gasoline. They said he might also tighten restrictions on the trading of ethanol blending credits to keep prices down for merchant refiners struggling with the cost of complying with the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
  • UMSCA makes fundamental changes to poultry industry
    While concerned about the implications for the supply management system, Canadian chicken producers are relieved to have a new North American Free Trade Agreement, a Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC) release said Monday. The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) ensures security for the ag industry but alters American access to the Canadian market. This access will be increased to 12 million kilograms. This increase is added to the access given under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) as well as the World Trade Organization (WTO) access which represents over 10.7 per cent of the Canadian chicken industry’s production. “What they’ve done is they’ve kind of jigged things around a little bit,” Marty Brett, senior corporate communications officer for CFC, told Farms.com yesterday. “We have basically gone from 7.5 per cent to 10.7 per cent … It’s six years of a fixed amount, and then it goes to a sliding percentage.” The new tariff rate quota will reach 57,000 metric tons by the sixth year of the USMCA agreement and will increase by 1 per cent for the following ten years, a CFC backgrounder said. Import stability is a priority for the Canadian chicken industry. Canada is the 14th-largest importer of chicken globally, with imports coming into the country either duty-free or with low tariffs. “Without a predictable level of imports, and when more access is given, production decreases in Canada,” Benoît Fontaine, chair of the CFC said in the Monday release. “This results in lost jobs, lost production and decreased consumer access to Canadian-raised products, not to mention the reduction in the contribution to Canada’s economy.” The CFC has also requested that the Canadian government halts imports of unlimited quantities of broiler chicken that are falsely declared as spent fowl. “Companies … (also) substitute high-value imported cuts with low-value domestic cuts for re-export,” the release said. The CFC anticipates working with the Canadian government to enact changes in the best interest of the industry, Fontaine said.

Summary:

US crude shipments to China that started in 2016 have come to a complete halt due to the trade war between the two countries. Although US crude oil exports are not included in tariff row, Chinese oil importers have completely turned away from making new order of crude from the US. This reporting did not deter massive buying of crude oil futures with the EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report release feeding a huge jump in crude oil prices. Crude reached a watermark high of 76.72 intraday.

The grain and oilseed markets were quite ahead of October Crop Production and Supply/Demand Report scheduled for release at noon eastern tomorrow. Corn, wheat and beans ranged from 3 to 4.25 cents in losses on the day.