The top importer of the crop is turning to Brazil
Major US corn buyer China has been reducing imports from the country due to weak demand and cheaper supplies from Brazil, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
Chinese buyers have reportedly canceled 832,000 tons of US corn orders in the past three weeks, while ramping up purchases from fellow BRICS member Brazil, which is projected to pass the US as the top exporter this year.
According to the report, citing traders, US corn is now less competitive, with supplies from Brazil around $30 a ton cheaper for delivery in the third quarter. Weak domestic demand for corn as animal feed was also listed among the reasons behind the cancelations.
“Demand for corn is really poor,” Wang Xiaoyang, a senior analyst with Sinolink Futures in one of the top grain-growing provinces, Henan, told Bloomberg. “Feed producers are using a lot of wheat to replace corn as prices keep falling.”
The report indicated that wheat prices are around 180 yuan ($26) a ton cheaper than corn in Henan and may decline further.
Meanwhile, traders and analysts pointed out that struggling hog farmers are seeking to cut feed costs, “so replacing corn with wheat is a natural choice.”
Customs data shows that Chinese corn imports hit a record of over 28 million tons in 2021, before falling to about 21 million tons last year.
READ MORE: Chinese food security push poses threat to US – report
China is reportedly seeking to shift away from its heavy reliance on the US and Ukraine for corn by diversifying suppliers, amid geopolitical uncertainty threatening the country’s food security. This month, China also received its first shipload of feed corn from South Africa, another fellow member of BRICS.......More Below
China has suspended several 2025 export controls on strategic materials — including rare earths, superhard materials, and lithium batteries – for a year. Is this a concession to the US, or a move in a far more complex game?
"The first aim of China’s export controls was to consolidate its leverage in negotiations. The second was to establish a long-term framework for managing such controls," says Yana Leksyutina, deputy director at the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Сhina could activate this mechanism at any moment, and now everyone knows it’s a lever it holds, she explains to Sputnik.
Balancing the Mineral Market
"The moratorium on export bans to the US essentially resets the rare earth market to where it was previously," Jeff J. Brown, author of 'The China Trilogy' and founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.
In the meantime, there will be a global rush by the US and its NATO allies to acquire as many rare earth ...
The Israeli regime has reportedly signed contracts worth millions of dollars in recent months to sway American public opinion as part of attempts to launder the occupying entity’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that the multimillion-dollar campaign aimed to reshape US public opinion, both online and offline, through coordinated influence operations combining digital marketing, AI, geotagging, and religious messaging.
The contracts, signed between the Israeli regime and firms linked to US President Donald Trump, reveal a “hasbara [propaganda] campaign” and schemes to target millions of US churchgoers, deploy bots, hire influencers, and try to make ChatGPT more pro-Israel.
The largest contract, worth $6 million, was signed with Clock Tower X, owned by Trump’s former digital campaign chief Brad Parscale, to produce and distribute roughly 100 core pieces of pro-Israel content per month and thousands......
