Dairy exports were sluggish in 2016, with most major dairy categories struggling to post year over year gains consistently throughout the year. Liquid milk and cream exports had the strongest year, annually totaling 114 million liters, a 17% gain on last year’s 98 million liters. Another bright spot on the dairy export front was the gain in products shipped under HTS code 0404, or whey products. This also had an annual increase of over 10% coming in at 488 thousand metric tons, and a 12% increase over last year. Both whey and fluid milk and cream products started 2016 with the first 6 months of the year showing lackluster gains, and some fairly substantial months of decline compared to 2015. Figure 1 displays the monthly year over year change in the six major product categories of USDA-FAS dairy export data.

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