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Corn Bears Hold onto Losses at Monday's Close

Corn Bears Hold onto Losses at Monday's Close

Yahoo5 days ago
Corn futures closed out the Monday session holding to their bearish sentiment from earlier in the day. Contracts were down 5 to 6 cents at the close. The CmdtyView national average new crop Cash Corn price was down 5 1/4 cents at $3.71 3/4.
USDA reported a private export sale of 225,000 MT of corn to Mexico this morning all for 2025/26. Another 229,000 was sold to unknown destinations, with 35,000 MT for 2024/25 and 194,000 MT for 2025/26.
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Crop Progress data indicated 76% of the US corn crop was silking as of 7/27, 1 point back of the 5-year average. The crop was 26% in the dough stage, vs. the 24% average. Condition ratings were down 1 point at 73% gd/ex and 384 on the Brugler500 index.
USDA tallied corn export shipments at 1.522 MMT (59.93 mbu) during the week ending on July 24. That was up 54.55% from last week and 42.16% above the same week last year. Of that total, 610,316 MT was headed to Japan, with 460,381 MT on its way to Mexico. Marketing year exports have totaled 60.34 MMT (2.376 bbu), which is 29.25% above the same period last year.
Over the weekend, President Milei of Argentina announced a reduction in the export tax for corn back to 9.5%, from 12%. AgRural estimates the Brazilian second corn crop at 68% harvested as of Thursday, shy of the 91% complete from the same week last year.
Sep 25 Corn closed at $3.93 3/4, down 5 3/4 cents,
Nearby Cash was $3.78 1/2, down 6 1/4 cents,
Dec 25 Corn closed at $4.14, down 5 cents,
Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.31 1/4, down 5 1/4 cents,
New Crop Cash was $3.71 5/8, down 5 1/4 cents,
On the date of publication, Austin Schroeder did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com
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Trump didn't chicken out. So what's Canada's next move?
Trump didn't chicken out. So what's Canada's next move?

Yahoo

time34 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump didn't chicken out. So what's Canada's next move?

Canada has now learned that the derisive acronym TACO — often slapped on U.S. President Donald Trump — is inaccurate and needs to be tweaked to something more like "Trump (Almost) Always Chickens Out." Despite putting decidedly lower tariffs than he'd threatened on dozens of countries around the globe and giving Mexico a 90-day reprieve from his threat to raise its tariff rate, Trump singled out Canada for an increase. While there's no way that Canada can characterize what happened as a win, there's plenty of evidence that it's not a reason for Prime Minister Mark Carney's government to panic and do something that jeopardizes what really matters for the Canadian economy: tariff-free access to the U.S. for the vast majority of exports. The key evidence backing this perspective comes in the economic number-crunching showing the actual impact of Trump's tariffs on the whole of Canada's exports to the U.S, what's called the effective tariff rate. Think of it as an average, weighted by the value of Canadian goods going across the border. Different economists have slightly different estimates, but even with the increase Trump announced Thursday night, there's consensus the effective tariff rate for Canada is down in the single digits, noticeably lower than the rate for any other major trading partner. That's because despite Trump's bluster, he's allowing the vast majority of Canada's exports into the country with zero tariff under the terms of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). WATCH | Canada's talks with Trump administration will continue, says minister of US trade: Experts and business leaders say Canada's trade negotiators and federal government need to be laser focused on maintaining that tariff-free access through CUSMA, especially since the deal is soon up for review. Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, says a bigger issue than Trump's incremental increase of the tariffs is the way Canada is struggling to "find a way forward" in its negotiations with the U.S. 'The conversation that we should be having' "I am hoping this is an opportunity to reassess and to some extent reset where we are and where we need to get to for the longer haul," Hyder told CBC's Katie Simpson in an interview Friday. While Hyder says he has empathy for Carney's government as it tries to navigate the uncharted waters of dealing with Trump 2.0 on trade, he's questioning whether its negotiating strategy has been aimed at the correct target. Canada must assess what it needs to do "to get into the conversation that we should be having, which is first and foremost: how are we going to review and renew the USMCA?" Hyder said, using the U.S. government's preferred acronym for the trade deal. The text of CUSMA calls for a formal review starting in July 2026, but consultations between the three countries are expected to begin this fall. As Trump levies blanket tariffs on nearly every other major trading partner, observers are increasingly pointing to the big tariff exemptions Canada is getting from CUSMA as a major competitive advantage. That creates a rather hefty source of motivation for the Carney government to make solidifying CUSMA the long-term goal of its talks with the Trump administration. The eternal question: Trump's real motivation for the tariffs On the other side of the border, there's a view that a significant driving force behind Trump's tariff tactics with Canada is gaining leverage in those CUSMA renewal talks. Although Department of Justice lawyers have been arguing in court that stopping the flow of fentanyl from Canada — as minimal as it is — justifies the tariffs, trade policy expert Inu Manak of the Council for Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., says she believes there's no way that's really what's motivating Trump. "I do think a lot of this has to do with some sort of renegotiation of parts of the CUSMA deal that the Trump administration is not happy with," Manak told CBC News Network on Friday. Although Trump hit Canada with a tariff increase, Manak isn't criticizing Canada's negotiating tactics. "There's no really good way to go about doing this," she said. "We've seen variation in approaches and no matter what, everyone seems to be getting hit with tariffs." WATCH | Breaking down the winners and loser in Trump's tariff gambit: CUSMA and its tariff-free access must remain the focus for Canada, says John Manley, a former Liberal deputy prime minister, now chair of chair of Jefferies Securities, a global investment banking firm. "The big game is the 93 per cent of Canadian goods that cross the border currently tariff-free under USMCA," Manley told CBC News. "That is what we need to protect." To retaliate or not? Even if the CUSMA renegotiation is what matters most in the long term for Canada, the Carney government also has to think about what its immediate next steps should be. Perhaps the most immediate question along those lines for Ottawa is whether to retaliate or not. Brian Clow, who served as former prime minister Justin Trudeau's deputy chief of staff and led his "war room" on Canada-U.S. trade relations, describes himself as a fan of retaliation, but is not advocating for Carney to fire back at Trump in this instance. "I do think [Carney and his team] need to stop and consider whether to further retaliate right now, given Canada is standing on its own, and the rest of the world is not standing with us," Clow said Friday in an interview with CBC News. WATCH | Should Carney hit back? Here's what a former PMO insider thinks: Carney's government also needs to think about what it can do about the tariffs that are actually having the biggest impact on Canada right now: the sectoral tariffs of 50 per cent on steel and aluminum and 25 per cent on the non-U.S. content of assembled automobiles. "Maybe there's one more step towards the American ask that we can take — that we can live with — that can close this deal," Clow said. The signals from Carney's team suggest the plan is to keep on keeping on. Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, said Friday that he and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump's point man on tariffs, agreed to speak by phone next week and arrange for a meeting later in August. "We'll continue to talk to the Americans," LeBlanc told reporters in Washington. "The United States will continue to be our neighbour, continue to be our most important economic and security partner." Both LeBlanc in his scrum and Carney in his statement acknowledged the need for the government to help the steel, aluminum and auto sectors. Getting carve-outs or reductions of those tariffs will no doubt be an objective as the talks with Team Trump progress.

Apple's $275 Billion China Bet Is Now A Major Risk
Apple's $275 Billion China Bet Is Now A Major Risk

Forbes

timean hour ago

  • Forbes

Apple's $275 Billion China Bet Is Now A Major Risk

Apple sells more than 220 million iPhones a year. By most estimates, nine in ten are made in China. Many of the components in Apple products are made, sourced, and assembled in China. The tech giant reported robust earnings for the three months to June, but the future is cloudy. It has been for some time because of Apple's reliance on China and the increasing tension between China and the US. Tariffs are one manifestation of the growing geopolitical strife. Chief executive Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that tariffs had already cost Apple $800 million in the previous quarter, and may add $1.1bn in costs to the next quarter. But it is not just the costs that tariffs will add to the Apple supply chain. Apple has nurtured Chinese companies whose products are now highly competitive with the tech giant. In the book Apple in China, the author Patrick McGee reports that Apple pledged in 2016 that over the following five years, it would invest more than $275 billion in China. That pledge was exceeded. The sophisticated supply chain Apple built in the country, with suppliers that Apple nurtured, is now being leveraged by Chinese companies, notably Huawei, to build sophisticated electronics products. Huawei's Mate XT is a more expensive phone with alluring features than the iPhone. Apple isn't expected to match these product capabilities until 2017. Apple has gone from leadership in design in this market, with the margins to match, to having serious competition. How could Apple have been so stupid? A fundamental concept of risk management is that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. Patrick McGee explains how this came to be in his outstanding book. McGee interviewed over 200 people, mostly Apple employees, to provide insights on this 'famously secretive company.' Apple's Historic Supply Chain Historically, Apple manufactured its own products across several regions. In 1983, Apple opened a highly automated plant in Fremont, California, to produce the first Macintosh computers. Apple established a presence in Europe with a plant in Cork, Ireland. This plant, which opened in 1980, later manufactured customized Macintosh computers for European markets. This is the historic way of hedging your bets and managing risk. Apple understood this principle. But as contract manufacturing emerged as an alternative to a company owning its own manufacturing plants, Apple experimented with this model and achieved positive outcomes. The theory behind contract manufacturing is that companies should focus on what they do best, their core competencies. In Apple's case, that was design. Initially, they were working with American firms and had plants in the US. But Taiwanese headquartered Foxconn proved to have better capabilities than its US rivals, and Foxconn won an increasing share of Apple's final assembly business. You can still practice effective risk management using contract manufacturers with plants in different regions of the world. Foxconn, at Apple's behest, did experiment with manufacturing in other regions of the world in addition to China. But Foxconn, a tremendously harsh taskmaster when it comes to their labor force, struggled to achieve the same level of quality, cost, and scalability anywhere but in their facilities in mainland China. Foxconn then committed to relying on production based in China. As Foxconn delivered better results than its competitors, they gained a larger and larger share of Apple's business. Apple's Strategy in Procurement Apple does not believe in win/win procurement or vested outsourcing. McGee points out that the iPhone accounts for fewer than 20% of smartphones sold globally, yet it garners more than 80% of industry profits. 'In no other market does a minority player command this kind of dominance.' 'Insofar as this statistic was discussed at all, it was chalked up to Apple's brand appeal.' This is not entirely true, says McGee. Apple was able to get suppliers to work for a pittance. As the design leader, suppliers came to believe that other electronics OEMs would copy the cutting-edge features in Apple phones and that they would be the leading contenders to win deals with Apple's competitors. These deals would command much higher margins. The Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn was the first to come to this conclusion. They bet big on this model. And they grew to be the world's largest contract manufacturer based on this bet. A Different Approach to Contract Manufacturing Companies can differentiate their products in different ways. Differentiation can be based on price, a broad set of product choices, service, or market-leading product capabilities. Being on the cutting edge of design is how Apple has always differentiated itself. This led to a fundamentally different kind of supply chain for Apple. Apple's electronics rivals sell a limited number of units across dozens of different models per year. The follow-the-leader strategy employed by these companies was based on using standardized parts with wider tolerances. 'But Apple was different,' McGee wrote. 'Apple's product portfolio remained radically simplified. Even by 2015, Apple was only releasing two new iPhones a year. They were hand crafting luxury phones but doing it in mass market quantities. In their search for suppliers, Apple gravitated toward quality, not price. To reach that quality, Apple had to come up with new processes to make the phones; but until Apple chose a new design these processes wouldn't exist. So it had to work far more intimately with suppliers.' This supplier intimacy model included designing and purchasing the equipment that the suppliers used. This is very different from standard contract manufacturing, where the contract manufacturer purports to have better manufacturing capabilities than the companies they work for, and their clients take a hands-off approach to managing production. 'Apple took extraordinary control over its suppliers to ensure it was getting the appropriate prices,' McGee explained. 'It demanded access to every detail about the suppliers' operating costs, from the wages of its workers and the cost of its dormitories to the bill of materials and expense of the machinery.' Apple also procured components on behalf of the suppliers. 'In fact, Apple often had a better sense of the supplier's operation costs than the supplier itself.' And as Foxconn concentrated on manufacturing in China, an industrial cluster of suppliers would grow up around these plants. Apple engineers would teach these suppliers, competing suppliers for different components, how to do quality manufacturing on a huge scale. China Subsidized Manufacturing in China Foxconn concentrated on manufacturing in China not just because of the low wages of the Chinese workers, but because the state subsidized and promoted export-led production in numerous ways. If you want to build a new factory in the US or Europe, obtaining the necessary building permits and complying with other regulations can take years. In China, authorities could make this happen in months. China would give Foxconn and some of the suppliers the land on which the factories would be built and then build the road infrastructure at no cost to Foxconn or their suppliers. Initially, China even bought new machine tools for companies like Foxconn. Local regions often lacked the necessary workers. China facilitated getting these workers from other, poorer regions of the nation. Are there rules about the number of hours workers are allowed to work, overtime, or environmental compliance? China prioritized building a sophisticated manufacturing base over the enforcement of these pesky regulations. Apple Has Been Captured by China McGee concludes that for Apple to extricate itself from production in China will be tremendously difficult. Suppliers with the requisite skills don't exist in other regions, and there is no guarantee that China will permit its indigenous suppliers to produce outside the country. The Chinese government can also make diversification painful. Beijing has deployed a number of tactics against other companies to make this point. Electricity suddenly becomes available for only a few hours a day. Raw materials can be stopped before they arrive at the factory. McGee concludes that there is no way Apple could diversify from China in any meaningful way within the next five years. 'It's just impossible.'

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