Best Month Ever for U.S. Red Meat Export Value

U.S. beef and pork exports closed a strong first quarter on a high note as March was the best month ever for red meat export value – exceeding $1.3 billion. Beef export value set a new record in March at $693.1 million, up 18 percent year-over-year and topping the previous high set in October 2014. March pork export value was the second-highest ever at $610.4 million – up 4 percent from a year ago and trailing only the November 2017 record of $615.8 million.

U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) Economist Erin Borror says South Korea stood out for beef export growth, and especially for its rapidly growing demand for higher-value chilled beef cuts. Chilled beef exports to Japan also trended higher, though frozen shipments to Japan were slowed by a temporary increase in the tariff rate (50 percent, up from the normal 38.5 percent) that was in effect from mid-August 2017 until April 1 of this year.

Pork export growth was also led by Korea, where rising pork consumption is especially evident in sales of home meal replacement items and convenience foods. Pork exports to Central and South America also continued to gain momentum and first-quarter shipments to Mexico held fairly steady with last year's record pace. Borror explains that these strong results helped offset a slowdown in China, where domestic pork production is trending higher, applying downward pressure on domestic pork prices and on China's demand for imported pork.

A full summary of the first-quarter export results for U.S. beef, pork and lamb is available in this USMEF news release.

TRANSCRIPT:

Joe Schuele: U.S. beef and pork exports closed a strong first quarter, as March was the best month ever for red meat export value at more than $1.3 billion. U.S. Meat Export Federation Economist Erin Borror has more details in this USMEF report:

Erin Borror: Beef exports were coming off of a record value year so it was incredibly impressive to see first quarter exceed that pace by several digits. Korea is really the big story, roughly 35 percent growth in the chilled volumes, and when I was in Korea earlier this year it was just absolutely evident that the market is on fire, and they're having essentially a steak craze over there so just a super-exciting, red-hot market.

And if we look at Japan, we're also seeing larger exports on the chilled side in the first quarter, but frozen was of course slowed by the frozen safeguard which was still in effect through the end of March, and that tariff dropped from 50 percent down to 38.5 on April 1 so we would expect those frozen volumes to pick back up again. For pork exports, March was also very strong because again we're looking at huge volumes last year so being able to hold with that big volume especially when we are talking about a slowdown in China given the surge essentially in their pork production and their sustained low pork prices which really haven't come back at all thus far, and so we knew that the rest of the world was going to have to step up, and that is indeed what has happened. So, similar to beef, Korea has been the big growth market and of course South and Central America have been strong growth markets, record-setting markets, and even Mexico we're basically holding steady there on last year's record pace and seeing that continue is exciting and is also critical as we do need to have all markets firing to sort of take up the slack as we know and expected China's market would cool.

Joe Schuele: For more information, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.

### The U.S. Meat Export Federation (www.USMEF.org) is the trade association responsible for developing international markets for the U.S. red meat industry. It is funded by USDA; the beef, pork, lamb, corn and soybean checkoff programs, as well as its members representing nine industry sectors: beef/veal producing & feeding, pork producing & feeding, lamb producing & feeding, packing & processing, purveying & trading, oilseeds producing, feedgrains producing, farm organizations and supply & service organizations.