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China shuns US soybeans in trade war retaliation.

Argentina’s Soybean Exports Surge

Please note White House in a Bind as Soybean Sales to China Plummet to Zero

A photographer’s snapshot of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at the United Nations General Assembly last week revealed a private message that captured the Trump administration’s deepening concern over collapsing U.S. soybean exports to China—a crisis now entangled with a controversial economic bailout of Argentina.

“Finally – just a heads up, I’m getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate,” read the message, which appeared to be sent from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. “We bailed out Argentina yesterday (Bessent) and in return, the Argentine’s [sic] are removing their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China, at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us.”

The photo, taken by Angelina Katsanis for the Associated Press, quickly circulated across social media, particularly in Argentina, where soybean exports have indeed surged in the wake of new economic aid from the U.S.

No Buyers in Beijing

China, once the largest buyer of American soybeans, has not purchased a single shipment since May, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. In 2024, China bought $12.5 billion of the $24.5 billion worth of soybeans the U.S. exported globally—more than 50 percent. For months now, the figure has been zero.

Soybeans account for 14 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports, making them the top food export by value. Farmers and trade officials say the loss of the Chinese market is not only destabilizing current revenues, but also threatening the long-term viability of American farms built to meet Chinese demand.

Overall U.S. soybean exports are down 23 percent year-over-year.

“Farmers are suffering terrible losses,” Jennifer Fahy, co-executive director at Farm Aid, a nonprofit organization advocating for farmers, told Newsweek, adding that these are “not economic blips, but potentially long-term or permanently lost markets due to ricocheting tariffs.”

“They [farmers] are telling us they’re losing $100 to 200 an acre this year,” she said.

China, meanwhile, has turned decisively toward South America. Chinese companies have secured 12 million metric tons of soybeans from Brazil and Argentina for delivery through October, entirely skipping U.S. suppliers during their primary marketing window.

Crop Diplomacy

Even with U.S. soybeans trading $40 per ton cheaper than Brazilian cargoes, Beijing’s 34 percent tariff makes them uncompetitive. A growing number of farmers are now bracing for what they describe as a second wave of losses, unless negotiations yield a breakthrough.

“We’re going to take some of the tariff money — relatively small amount, but a lot for the farmers — and we’re going to help the farmers out a little bit,” Trump said last week, acknowledging the predicament with a voting bloc that heavily skews Republican. Yet no formal plan has been announced, and he appeared to confuse “millions” and “billions” when describing the potential aid.

“We don’t want aid payments,” Brian Warpup, a fourth-generation farmer in Indiana, told the AP. “We want to work. The worst thing that we could ever want is a handout.”

China Weaponizes Soybeans

Politico comments China weaponizes ag imports to target Trump and US farmers

Trump launched his tariff war earlier this year expressing confidence that China’s reliance on the U.S. market would force Beijing to accept trade terms that benefited American businesses and consumers. Six months after the president’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and weeks from the Nov. 10 White House cutoff for a trade pact between the two countries, U.S. soybean farmers are learning that China — long the predominant market for their product — doesn’t need them anymore.

China has not purchased any U.S. soybeans since May, according to the American Soybean Association. Beijing has pivoted to suppliers in Brazil and Argentina — logging huge orders for Latin American beans and leaving U.S. farmers in the cold and panicking.

“How can we be surprised? It’s a repeat of Trump 1.0,” said Marc Busch, who has advised both the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Commerce Department from 2012 to 2018 on trade and is a professor of international business diplomacy at Georgetown University.

The effective boycott of the U.S. soybean industry at the height of the September harvest season suggests more than just a tit-for-tat import curb. The midwestern soybean producing states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Indiana are a key political constituency for the GOP in the run-up to congressional midterm elections next year.

“The Chinese want Trump to feel the pain by having U.S. farmers say ‘This guy is really costing us big time,’” said Harry Broadman, a former assistant U.S. trade representative in the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. “They want to get out of the [soy trade] relationship with the U.S. because it’s punishing them with tariffs, but they’re also doing so because they know that these are in areas where votes matter.”

It’s a strategy that appears to be working. Powerful agriculture lobbying groups, traditionally Trump allies, have flooded the White House with complaints that the tariffs are responsible for China’s snub of the U.S. soybean crop.

Amid the outcry from farmers, Trump announced Thursday that he plans to use tariff revenue for cash bailouts to farmers “until the tariffs kick in to their benefit.” That will require congressional approval and aid likely won’t reach farmers until early 2026.

“Why would USA help bail out Argentina while they take American soybean producers’ biggest market??? We shld use leverage at every turn to help hurting farm economy Family farmers shld be top of mind in negotiations by representatives of USA,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in an X post Thursday.

The longer-term outlook for a return to large-volume soybean sales to China looks equally grim. Beijing’s distrust of the durability of Trump administration trade pledges — and Xi’s drive for self-sufficiency to insulate his economy from foreign pressure — may mean that U.S. farmers have lost access to the Chinese soybean market for the foreseeable future.

A Lose-Lose Setup

In August, Trump urged China to start buying soybeans again, posting on social media, “I hope China will quickly quadruple it’s soybean orders.”

Why would they?

Actually, there is an economic answer. Even with Chinese tariffs, US has a price advantage.

However, like Trump, China doesn’t care how economically stupid tariffs are. So Chinese buyers suffer and US farmers suffer.

Trump’s Idiotic Solution

Trump’s idiotic solution is to take tariffs collected from US consumers and give the money to US farmers.

Trump also proposed to give consumers a rebate and balance the budget with tariffs.

Pig will fly before that happens.

No one wins trade wars.

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