Record U.S. Agricultural Trade Deficit Forecasted to Keep Growing

Apr 28, 2025 at 11:31 AM CST
After decades of substantial U.S. agricultural trade surpluses, staggering agricultural trade deficits over the past two years have caught the nation’s attention. For fiscal year 2024 (October 2023 – September 2024), USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates that there will be a record $32 billion agricultural trade deficit. The fiscal year 2024 deficit follows the current record deficit of $16.7 billion set in fiscal year 2023 and would be only the fourth agricultural trade deficit in the last 50 years. This trend reversal leaves many people scratching their heads, but your American Farm Bureau Federation Economics team is here to help explain how we got here. Agricultural trade is essential to our nation’s food security, and benefits both farmers and consumers alike. Farmers find export markets eager to buy U.S. products that we grow in abundance such as grains, oilseeds, meat and more. Consumers have become used to eating fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, much of which would be impossible without imports from our southern trading partners. Many cannot live without their daily cup of coffee, a tropical import we do not grow in the continental United States. (Apologies to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which combined grow approximately 0.2% of the coffee we consume).

Apr 28, 2025 at 11:31 AM CST

After decades of substantial U.S. agricultural trade surpluses, staggering agricultural trade deficits over the past two years have caught the nation’s attention. For fiscal year 2024 (October 2023 – September 2024), USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates that there will be a record $32 billion agricultural trade deficit. The fiscal year 2024 deficit follows the current record deficit of $16.7 billion set in fiscal year 2023 and would be only the fourth agricultural trade deficit in the last 50 years. This trend reversal leaves many people scratching their heads, but your American Farm Bureau Federation Economics team is here to help explain how we got here.

Agricultural trade is essential to our nation’s food security, and benefits both farmers and consumers alike. Farmers find export markets eager to buy U.S. products that we grow in abundance such as grains, oilseeds, meat and more. Consumers have become used to eating fresh fruits and vegetables year-round, much of which would be impossible without imports from our southern trading partners. Many cannot live without their daily cup of coffee, a tropical import we do not grow in the continental United States. (Apologies to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, which combined grow approximately 0.2% of the coffee we consume).