The Other Cheap Meat: Pork Prices Spiral Lower Amid Trade War
Production booms as tariffs weigh on American exports
Wholesale hams drop to lowest level since April 2015
By Lydia Mulvany, Bloomberg
February 6, 2019
Pork just keeps getting cheaper.
At 65.61 cents a pound on Wednesday, the meat fetched the lowest wholesale price for the date in a decade. Hams, in particular, are spiraling, collapsing to 44.29 cents a pound, the lowest since April 2015.
The price crash is yet another knock-on effect from Donald Trump’s trade war. American meat production had already been in a boom period for some time, and then Chinese tariffs on U.S. pork weighed on exports, hurting a key component of demand. Mexico also placed duties on U.S. shipments last year.
The market is dropping to “a low enough price level to clear the short-term supply without help from exports,” Terry Roggensack, one of the founding principals at commodity researcher Hightower Report, said in a note Wednesday.
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