One pound of US pork in four is eaten in another country, and two fifths of that goes to Mexico. In 2025 the United States exported 7.0 billion pounds of pork, carcass weight, 25 percent of what its plants produced. The buyers are few and each one wants a different part of the hog.
Where it goes
USDA's Economic Research Service reports the monthly trade by destination. The 2025 year and the first eight months of 2026:
| Destination | 2025, million lb | Share | Jan to Aug 2026, million lb | Change on 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico | 2,822 | 40.5% | 1,766 | flat |
| Japan | 959 | 13.8% | 749 | +14% |
| South Korea | 650 | 9.3% | 423 | -9% |
| Central America, seven countries | 520 | 7.5% | 372 | +11% |
| Canada | 474 | 6.8% | 307 | +5% |
| China and Hong Kong | 365 | 5.2% | 257 | -1% |
| Colombia | 358 | 5.1% | 263 | +7% |
| Dominican Republic | 274 | 3.9% | 205 | +21% |
| Australia | 223 | 3.2% | 118 | -30% |
| All destinations | 6,972 | 100% | 4,645 | +1% |
2025 was 2 percent under the 2024 record. The US Meat Export Federation, which counts in product weight, put the year at 2.94 million tonnes worth $8.4 billion, about $65 for every hog slaughtered.
Who buys what
The markets do not compete for the same cuts. That is the point of exporting: each one pays more for a part of the hog than the US consumer would.
Mexico buys hams. USDA's outlook puts it plainly: Mexico has been the top buyer of US pork, particularly fresh bone-in hams, since 2015, with the one exception of China in 2020. USMEF calls Mexico its dominant customer for hams. The US ham price is in large part a Mexican price, and the ham cuts article shows the insides, outsides and knuckles that come out of it.
Japan buys chilled loins. USMEF's Japan office says the majority of Japan's chilled pork imports are loins, sold thinly sliced at retail. Japan is the second market by value, $1.3 billion in 2025, and the United States supplied 27 percent of its pork imports. Japan's tariff on US pork sits at the same level as the Pacific trade bloc's members, 0.2 percent in the 2026 fiscal year and zero from April 2027, with a gate price that fell to 54 yen a kilo.
Korea buys bellies and butts. The Pork Checkoff describes belly as Korea's most imported primal and the butt as its bacon raw material. US product was 34 percent of Korea's pork imports in 2025, the largest share, by Korean customs data.
China buys variety meats. More than 70 percent of US pork shipped to China is variety meat, by USMEF's count, the feet, heads, stomachs and organs that have little value at home. Volume fell 21 percent in 2025 and ran about flat through August 2026 under a 47 percent Chinese tariff on US pork and variety meat.
Canada, Colombia, Central America and the Caribbean take a mix of muscle cuts; the Central American seven and the Dominican Republic were the fastest-growing buyers in 2026.
The ten-year shift
In 2015 Mexico took 31 percent of US pork exports and Japan 25 percent. By 2025 Mexico was at 41 percent and Japan at 14. The change is hams: Mexican volume rose 82 percent in ten years while the total rose 39 percent. China's turn at the top in 2020, after African swine fever cut its own herd, took 28 percent of US exports that year and was gone by 2022.
The policy behind the flows
Four things moved in 2025 and 2026, all with dates.
China put an extra 10 percent tariff on US pork from March 10, 2025, on top of earlier retaliation, for a 57 percent total; a November 2025 arrangement took 10 points off, leaving 47 percent, the rate USMEF still cites in October 2026.
Mexico opened an anti-dumping investigation on US pork legs and shoulders, bone-in and boneless, on December 15, 2025, covering 2024 shipments. From May 15 to July 17, 2026 it also suspended US breeding pigs, semen and offal over pseudorabies, which USMEF says softened the summer's Mexican volume.
At the July 2026 joint review the United States declined to renew the North American trade agreement in its current form; the agreement stays in force unless it expires in 2036, and pork keeps crossing.
Japan's tariff schedule, above, is the one piece of good news: by April 2027 US pork enters Japan duty free at the Pacific bloc's terms.
The forecast
USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service expects US pork exports to rise 1 percent in 2027 to 3.2 million tonnes on more production, less EU supply and steady demand from Mexico and Canada. The Economic Research Service has 2026 at 7.05 billion pounds and 2027 at 7.10 billion, and expects a quarter of production to keep leaving the country, with the caveat that Mexican demand growth is sluggish.