U.S. Cotton Export and Global Market Share Declined in 2023

Most of the milling, spinning, and textile manufacturing supply chain has moved from the Western world to developing countries, primarily Southeast Asia. U.S. textile manufacturing peaked in the 1994/95 marketing year with domestic use of cotton estimated at 11.198 million 480-pound bales. Since the 1994/95 marketing year, U.S. domestic cotton use has steadily declined to a projected record low of 1.75 million bales in the 2023/24 marketing year. As a result, exports are a significant source of demand for U.S. cotton. Since the early 2000s, exports, as a proportion of U.S. cotton production, have been on an upward trend, increasing from 39% in 2000 to a high of 112% in 2020. For the past decade, the U.S. exported, on average, 85% of the cotton produced domestically. The export market has been the driving force for U.S. cotton demand.