Ukraine's corn could benefit from US tariffs, analyst says
KYIV, April 3 (Reuters) - Ukrainian corn, a key element of the country's grain sector, could benefit from the tariffs imposed by the U.S., as it is able to partially substitute for U.S. corn if retaliatory sanctions are imposed, ASAP Agri analysts said on Thursday.
Ukraine is a global major corn grower and exporter.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 10% minimum tariff on most U.S. imports, with significantly higher duties on goods from dozens of countries including China, which is likely to prompt countermeasures potentially driving up prices and reducing demand for U.S. goods.
"If key importers do end up imposing tariffs on U.S. corn, it will open a huge window of opportunity for alternative suppliers," ASAP Agri said in a statement.
"Ukrainian corn is in a strong position here: competitive pricing, stable logistics, and close ties with the European Union and Asian markets," it added.
The consultancy said Brazil is "first in line", but its harvest simply cannot cover all the demand and that is exactly where Ukraine "can step in and claim its share".
Ukraine produced 32 million metric tons of corn in 2023 and 26 million tons in 2024. The country exported almost 30 million tons in the 2023/24 season and is likely to ship abroad 22 million tons in 2024/25, according to the UCAB business association.
Farmers are likely to increase area sown for corn this year as corn export prices are lucrative.
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The world won't acknowledge it yet, but we owe Israel a debt of gratitude
'I swear I believe Armageddon is near.' This was Ronald Reagan's initial reaction, writing in his diary, after hearing news of the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak on June 7 1981. The Israeli attack was a major operational success, destroying Osirak and denying Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein a nuclear bomb. In time, American leaders would come to recognise that they owed Israel a huge debt of gratitude for disarming Iraq's monstrous tyrant. Yet this is not how they reacted publicly at the time. For the deeply religious Reagan, with his profound aversion to nuclear weapons, his initial reaction was a mix of horror and confusion. As the historian William Inboden put it in The Peacemaker, his recent book on the US president's national security strategy, 'Reagan worried that his first year in office might also be the last year of Earth's existence.' 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Moment one of Putin's warplanes crashes after wing falls off during bombing raid
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The falsehoods revive prior conspiracies that the protests are a planned provocation from leftist governments and not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids. On his platform, Truth Social, Trump has baselessly claimed protesters are 'Paid Insurrectionists!' Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have been targets of some of the misinformation that seeks to link them to communism. A fake picture of Bass with Cuba's late leader Fidel Castro, with his arm around her has circulated on social media. The original picture showed Castro with the late activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela. Bass does have some connections to Cuba; she traveled to the country with the Venceremos Brigade in the 1970s to do volunteer construction work and later went there as a member of Congress. She received criticism in 2020 for calling Castro's death ' a great loss, ' but the fake picture is a step further to link her directly with Fidel Castro. 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Sheinbaum responded on X, saying it's 'absolutely false' and included a video of herself from the day before saying she does not agree with violent actions as a form of protest. She also accused the opposition party of falsely saying she incited the protests. In some cases, videos and photos that include a hammer and sickle, are taken out of context to make it seem the protests are a communist movement. One post with tens of thousands of views claims that the protests are 'URBAN COMMUNIST TERRORISM.' One Spanish-language post from an account with over 1 million followers glorifies violence against 'progressive anti-ICE protestors.' Situations like these create fertile ground for disinformation to spread. Fake accounts in Spanish are more prevalent than they are in English, according to Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University and co-director of its Media Forensic Hub. Social media platforms are more likely to identify and shut down accounts in English than in other languages. Linvill said that another reason accounts in Spanish are more common than in English is that the use of marketing companies utilizing fake accounts — on behalf of political organizations or politicians — has spiked in the last few years. The spread of false information 'is absolutely having an effect on driving partisanship, conspiratorial thinking, distrust for expertise and the lack of a sort of shared reality,' said Linvill. 'A shared reality is important for us to build compromise and govern nations together. And I think it is absolutely having an effect on that.' 'The degree to which motivated actors [bad actors], are responsible, versus the fundamental nature of social media to create a giant game of telephone that virtually generates the spread of false information, it's hard to say,' Linvill said.
