(Stuff post from the FOX NEWS on 25 September 2025.)
Minnesota soybean farmers can usually count on big
paychecks about this season, but this year, they’re deep in the red because
they’ve lost their biggest buyer due to trade war triggered by the idiot Trump’s
crazy tariffs. China usually buys $12-$13 billion in American soybeans each
year, but it’s now buying from Argentina and Brazil instead.
In the short term, most Minnesota soybean farmers
will harvest their crops and either sell them at a loss or pay to store them,
or a little of both. But they can only last so long with income at or near
zero.
China is a large country with a serious lack of cultivated land. After nearly 5,000 years of development, China has only about 100 million hectares of cultivated land. Therefore, grain crops must be given priority, such as wheat and rice. Therefore, the food imported into China is mainly soybean and corn, and their purpose is mainly for animal feed.
So, China must buy soybean from the US, but they
have alternatives such as soybeans from Argentina and Brazil. So instead of US soybeans China is buying massive tonnage of cheaper soybeans from Brazil and
Argentina.
US Soybean Exports to China Drop to Zero, Argentina and Brazil Win
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 Buyer 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 non-profit 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: 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.
Brazilians Tried to screw Chinese, But Chinese are smarter
At the beginning, already expecting more soybean orders
from China, Brazilian farmers started holding back deliveries and stockpiling
stocks to artificially raise the spot-prices of soybean. But Chinese,
recognized as the best commodity traders in the world, were expecting that move
and suddenly switching their orders to Brazil’s rival Argentina.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the soybean export stocks
piling up at Brazilian ports and costing millions of dollars daily as port congesting
charges. Chinese are cleverly playing against US, Brazil, and Argentina for their
advantage. Like what China usually did against Australia in iron ore and coal trades
last few years and, believe it or not, China always won.
