Key Points
- New USDA data shows China’s soybean purchases are far below what the Trump administration promised after the recent trade truce.
- China has only bought 332,000 metric tons of soybeans, a fraction of the millions of tons that were announced.
- Soybean prices fell sharply on Friday amid weak demand from China.
- Experts say U.S. soybeans remain too expensive due to tariffs, and China has a ready supply from South America.
New data from the Agriculture Department on Friday has cast serious doubt on whether China will actually buy the massive amounts of American soybeans that the Trump administration announced last month. The USDA report, released after the government reopened, showed that China has made only two purchases of American soybeans since the high-profile summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Those purchases totaled a mere 332,000 metric tons.
This is a far cry from the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China would buy by January, and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she claimed they would purchase annually for the next three years.
American farmers had been hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But Tanner Ehmke, an economist at CoBank, said there’s little reason for China to buy from the U.S. right now. They have plenty of soybeans from Brazil and other South American countries, and the remaining U.S. tariffs make American soybeans more expensive.
“We are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,” Ehmke said.
Beijing has not confirmed any specific soybean purchase agreement, only that the two sides reached a “consensus” to expand farm trade. The White House did not respond to questions about the lack of Chinese purchases or whether farmers can still expect an aid package that Trump had promised.
Soybean prices fell sharply on Friday, dropping 23 cents to $11.24 per bushel. Ehmke said this was the market reacting to the “shock” of weak Chinese demand, as confirmed by the USDA data.
This situation is familiar to American farmers. After Trump’s first trade war with China, a 2020 agreement also promised huge purchases of U.S. crops, but those promises were never fully met.
While soybean prices are still a bit higher than they were a year ago, farmers are struggling with the soaring costs of fertilizer, seed, and equipment. The president of the American Soybean Association, Caleb Ragland, has warned that thousands of farmers could go out of business this year without significant Chinese purchases or government aid.
