Your Pro Farmer newsletter (April 26, 2025) is now available

The Trump administration eased its rhetoric toward China, though Beijing denied President Donald Trump’s assertion the two sides were involved in active negotiations over tariffs. At the same time there seemed to be stronger-than-expected progress in trade talks with Japan, India and South Korea on technical terms of trade deals. Even so, it takes a long time to negotiate major trade deals – and even longer to implement them. However, it appears most countries are willing to make concessions on purchases of U.S. ag goods to get framework deals in place. Given the extreme trade policy uncertainty, the International Monetary Fund cut its global economic growth forecasts and warned of intensifying downside risks. On the crop front, the U.S. corn and soybean planting paces pushed ahead of average before major rains rolled across the central United States. We cover all of these items and much more in this week’s newsletter, which you can download here.