According to a report by the RIA Nowosti news agency, citing data from the US statistics service, the United States has quadrupled its purchases of Russian cocoa products, particularly chocolate, in the first eleven months of 2024, reaching a three-year high. The agency writes: “Between January and November, the United States imported cocoa and cocoa products from Russia worth almost $2.5 million, triple the amount of a year earlier. This is the highest purchase volume since 2021. Even the November imports were record-breaking – in this month, American buyers purchased Russian chocolate for $389,000, the highest value since January 2022.”
The report states that the US primarily imports chocolate and other cocoa-containing finished products from Russia, with occasional imports of unsweetened cocoa powder, but these quantities are small. The United States is the world’s largest importer of chocolate, with the majority of its imports coming from Canada, followed by Mexico and Belgium. Among the top ten suppliers to the US are France, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Turkey, and Germany.
Despite the increasing trade with the US, the most important markets for Russian chocolate remain the CIS countries and China. Russian chocolate takes a significant part of the Chinese market: by the end of last year, the country had become the main supplier of chocolate to China, surpassing Italy and Belgium.