The adjustment to the USA tariff proposals continues to impact decision making on items from China, India and elsewhere. We are seeing shifting patterns in freight arrangements plus short covering from buyers in the USA as they await realignment negotiations. All are expecting it to be resolved within December.

A relatively quiet month for contracts being placed due we feel to general global uncertainty and building a lack of confidence along with realignment of trade patterns. The biggest indicator of this is probably freight rates which have continued to weaken as demand has been poor. The general feeling is that a lot of buyers stocked up their inventory early to deal with supply chain issues and for the USA variable tariff strategy which has delayed annual contract placement.

The 5th October sees Anuga 2025 start in Cologne and as previous years have shown it is often a moment of realisation of market trends and conditions. We expect this year to be no different as end users and producers get a chance to chat face to face.

This month we know global weather patterns are impacting markets in most regions, and we have seen prices adjust accordingly. It is unlikely they will reverse now, so expect them to climb at varying pace. Global uncertainty is leading to currency volatility which does not favour importing countries not US dollar based unfortunately. This is likely to continue and combined with the challenge to the US tariffs by the court is likely to continue for some weeks.

The major unknown this month is the actual impact of various global weather occurrences in many growing regions. We will mention specifically below but this seems to be becoming a regular comment each year now. In addition, the impact of the on/off tariff regime in USA is challenging planning, shipping arrangements and general market dynamics on most products. Let’s hope it settles down since we feel continuity of regulations is more important than tariff amount in stabilising trade routes.

The US$ has generally continued to weaken as a consequence of tariffs impacts on USA trade arrangements. The delay of the imposition of tariffs, whilst a relief in one respect, continues to draw out the uncertainty over this subject and how to plan as a consequence. However, it does provide an opportunity to cover US$ based commodities at more attractive prices for EU and UK clients.

As we have been mentioning now for several month the instability introduced by the USA tariffs on global trade patterns are hard to predict and with the recent US court decision to suspend the tariffs continues this theme. The major impacts felt so far include a general weakening of the US dollar helping importers pick up good value on US$ based commodities, disruption in trade routes and shipping lines adjust to the changing demand patterns. This fundamentally has lengthened supply chains again! Freight rates have rebounded too, doubling in some cases. The announcement that UK Food laws will now mirror the EU legislation as opposed to devolving since Brexit, will probably have little impact on our sector. Many UK customers have continued to insist product comply with EU regulations because they export finished products to the European community.

The disruption of long held trade agreements continues, although too some extent business is returning with a ‘just keep going’ attitude. The new USA tariff regime has in part been suspended with numerous discussions taking part. The next major change will be in July when theoretically reciprocal tariffs will come back into play, but we expect there will be multiple announcements before then.