Chicago | Reuters—Chicago corn and soy futures eased on Friday ahead of a long weekend in the U.S., after President Donald Trump posted on social media that he recommended a 50 per cent tariff on goods from the European Union.
Wheat also fell as buying slowed after a rally earlier in the week, according to analysts.
The most active soybean contract on the Chicago Board of Trade Sv1 ended down 7-1/4 cents at $10.60-1/4 a bushel, corn Cv1 fell 3-1/2 cents to finish at $4.59-1/2 a bushel, and wheat Wv1 settled down 2 cents at $5.42-1/2 per bushel.
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U.S. wheat futures closed higher on Thursday on concerns over the limited availability of supplies for export in Russia, analysts said.
Ahead of the three-day Memorial Day weekend, which will keep U.S. markets closed on Monday, headlines continue to flow from the White House, said Arlan Suderman, Chief Commodities Economist at StoneX.
“That leaves traders a bit at risk,” he said.
Corn and soybeans were both trading unchanged prior to Trump’s social media post recommending steep tariffs on the EU, he said.
Fears of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods drove futures down afterward, Suderman added.
Favorable U.S. crop conditions and large harvests in Brazil were also keeping a lid on corn and soybean prices.
The International Grains Council raised its forecast for 2025-26 global corn production by 3 million metric tons to 1.277 billion tons.
Wheat rose earlier in the week on concerns over the impact of previous adverse weather in Russia and China and an unexpected decline in U.S. wheat ratings.
Demand for competitively priced U.S. wheat also helped underpin prices, as illustrated by better-than-expected weekly U.S. wheat export sales data released on Thursday.
However, said Suderman, “buying kind of dried up here at the end of the week as buyers stepped aside and there were people willing to sell the rally.”
—Additional reporting by Peter Hobson in Canberra and Gus Trompiz in Paris
