USDA cuts reported beef export sales by 90 percent after error

The U.S. Department of Agriculture cut its reported late-June beef export sales to 12,064 metric tons from 126,062, a 90 percent revision after the agency said it had received incorrect data from an exporting company. The mistaken figure had appeared in the USDA’s weekly export sales report published July 2 and was quickly questioned by traders because it implied deals with some countries far larger than those buyers had historically made with the United States.

The correction landed at a sensitive moment for the cattle market, where beef prices are already at record highs and every export number can move expectations for supply, pricing and hedging. Traders use the USDA’s weekly sales data to judge overseas demand, while ranchers and feedlot operators watch the same figures to shape marketing plans and lock in prices. When a report misses by that much, it can ripple through cash markets and futures trading before the correction is ever issued.

The episode also renewed scrutiny of the agency’s reporting system. The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service lost about 21 percent of its employees in the first half of last year, after staffing cuts tied to the Trump administration’s reshaping of federal agencies. Market participants have already been unsettled by other recent problems, including an undercount of corn acreage last year and a delayed agricultural trade report that omitted tariff-related findings analysts said mattered to the balance of the report.

One trader said the agency probably should have caught the error. That complaint now hangs over a broader question: whether a one-week correction was simply a bad data submission that slipped through, or another sign that the statistical machinery behind U.S. agricultural trade reporting is struggling to keep pace with a fast-moving commodity system.

For policymakers, the stakes go beyond beef. USDA export figures feed into farm income forecasts, trade negotiations and debates over the health of U.S. agriculture. A revision of this size does not just change one line in one weekly report; it raises the cost of trusting the next one.