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U.S. 2025/26 Sugar Supply Is Raised and Use Is Lowered; Mexico’s 2025/26 Sugar Exports to the United States Are Reduced
The U.S. 2025/26 sugar supply is forecast at 13.808 million short tons, raw value (STRV), up 34,000 STRV from last month, as the decrease in production is more than offset by higher beginning stocks and a slight increase in imports. Beginning stocks are raised mainly due to an 80,000-STRV reduction in the 2024/25 deliveries for human consumption to 12.045 million, based on the persistent slowdown in deliveries through May. The weak delivery pace is expected to continue into the next fiscal year, thus the 2025/26 forecast for food use deliveries is lowered by 165,000 STRV to 11.960 million. The 2025/26 additional refined specialty tariff-rate quota (TRQ), which historically was filled by organic sugar imports, was not announced by USDA at the time of the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report. Thus, high-tier tariff refined sugar imports are raised by 236,000 STRV on the assumption that organic sugar would still enter paying the high duty in the absence of this TRQ. Sugar imports from Mexico are set at 439,275 STRV—229,650-STRV lower than last month’s 668,925—based on the suspension agreements’ U.S. Needs formula to achieve a U.S. 13.5-percent stocks-to-use ratio. Formulaically, the lower amount of sugar imports from Mexico are due to the larger beginning stocks and lower food use deliveries, since the unannounced additional specialty TRQ was already accounted for in the 668,925-STRV calculation.
Mexico’s 2025/26 sugar production is unchanged from last month at 5.094 million metric tons, a 7-percent recovery from the weather-affected 2024/25 campaign. Supply in 2025/26 is raised on larger beginning stocks, mainly due to lower 2024/25 use. The reduction of sugar exports to the United States in 2025/26 is offset by a larger projected exports outside of the suspension agreements’ export license system, which are mostly to other countries.