USDA data casts doubt on China’s soybean purchase promises touted by Trump

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – New data the Agriculture Department released Friday created serious doubts about whether China will really buy millions of bushels of American soybeans like the Trump administration touted last month after a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The USDA report released after the government reopened showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit in South Korea that totaled 332,000 metric tons. That’s well short of the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China agreed to purchase by January and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she said they would buy in each of the next three years.

American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank’s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn’t much incentive for China to buy from America right now because they have plenty of soybeans on hand that they have bought from Brazil and other South American countries this year, and the remaining tariffs ensure that U.S. soybeans remain more expensive than Brazilian beans.

“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 yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached “consensus” on expanding trade in farm products. Ehmke said that even if China did promise to buy American soybeans it may have only agreed to buy them if the price was attractive.

Trump said his team spoke with Chinese officials today and they assured the White House they would be purchasing more soybeans, but he didn’t offer any details of how much.

“They’re in the process of doing not only a little bit but they’ll be doing a lot of soybean purchases,” he told reporters.

The Chinese tariff on American beans remains high at about 24%, despite a 10-percentage-point reduction following the summit.

Soybean prices fell sharply by 23 cents to $11.24 per bushel Friday. Ehmke said “that’s the market being shocked by the lack of Chinese demand that was confirmed in USDA data today.” Prices are still higher than they were before the agreement when they were selling for $10.60 per bushel, but the price may continue to drop unless there are significant new purchases.

Before the trade agreement, Trump had promised farmers would receive an aid package to help them survive the trade war with China. That was put on hold during the shutdown, and now it’s not clear whether the administration will offer farmers aid like Trump did in his first administration.

American farmers have been through this before after Trump’s first trade war with China. The trade agreement China signed with the United States in 2020 promised massive purchases of U.S. crops. But the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted trade between the two nations just as the agreement went into effect. In 2022, U.S. farm exports to China hit a record, but then fell.

Soybean prices are actually still a little higher than they were a year ago even without China’s normal purchases of roughly one-quarter of the U.S. crop. That’s because this year’s soybean crop is a little smaller while domestic demand remained strong with the continued growth in biodiesel production.

But farmers are dealing with the soaring cost of fertilizer, seed, equipment and labor this year, and that is hurting their profits. The Kentucky farmer who is president of the American Soybean Association, Caleb Ragland, has said he worries that thousands of farmers could go out of business this year without significant Chinese purchases or government aid.

Ragland said he’s still optimistic that China will follow through on the purchases, but it’s hard to be confident in that right now with so few sales reported.

“We don’t want to assume they won’t. But it’s going to be a wonderful day when we actually deliver those soybeans, and when there’s my money in hand and so forth and the transaction’s complete,” Ragland said.

China is the world’s largest buyer of soybeans. China bought more than $12.5 billion worth of the nearly $24.5 billion worth of U.S. soybeans that were exported last year.

But China quit buying American soybeans this year after Trump imposed his tariffs and continued to shift more of their purchases over to South America. Even before the trade war, Brazilian beans accounted for more than 70% of China’s imports last year, while the U.S. share fell to 21%, World Bank data shows.

Ragland said that every vender he talks to has told him they are increasing their prices for next year, which will continue to put pressure on farmers.

“We’re still looking at sharp losses and the red ink as we figure budgets for 26 is still very much in play,” he said.

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AP Writer Didi Tang contributed to this report from Washington.