Andrew Streff, just like other American soybean farmers, is in panic mode as he harvests what is expected to be a bumper crop without his biggest customer – China. He said – “China hasn’t purchased any soybeans from the United States this year, thanks to the president. Our beans are the cheapest in the world, by about US$2 a bushel, but this trade war is keeping us out of China – our biggest customer.”
At the Purfeerst farm in southern Minnesota, the soybean harvest just wrapped up for the season. The silver grain bins are full of about 100,000 bushels of soybeans, which grab about US$10 a piece. This year, the fate of the soybeans and people whose livelihoods depend on selling them is up in the air. China has not purchased a single dollar.
Streff, the Salem-area farmer, also works as a commodities broker in Mitchell. He said farmers like him who locked in a price with a grain buyer months before harvest are doing better, but “you were gambling on the future.” He said – “A lot of farmers were hoping the president learned from the last time around. But it didn’t surprise me – he campaigned on doing these tariffs. The U.S. elected someone who likes to pick fights with other countries, and now we’re in the middle of it.”
Robert Lee, harvesting 300 acres of soybeans on his land near De Smet, N.D., said many farmers are hesitant to blame Trump for bad bean prices. “But the fact is, China imported 120 million metric tons of soybeans this year and not one bushel came from the U.S. That’s a direct result of this trade war,” – Lee said. Despite a ceasefire in the tariff war, it appears China is still boycotting American soybeans.
President Trump claimed on Monday that he was “going to do some farm stuff this week” to help growers cope with the loss of exports to China, but is stuck due to government shutdown. While Congress has already passed a US$10 billion bailout in December for farmers, the Trump administration is considering allocating US$10 billion to $14 billion more to farmers to help mitigate fallout from this year’s trade war alone.
To rub salt in the wound, rising costs for equipment, propane, seed, fertilizer, and a glut of corn and soybeans, are already squeezing farmers’ balance sheets. Farmers were similarly affected by the trade war during Trump’s first term. Congress responded with US$28 billion of aid for farmers in 2018 and 2019 to compensate for the lost income. The aid would come from the tariff revenue, estimated about US$171 billion this year.
But to keep bailing out farmers obviously isn’t a long-term solution. China is the world’s leading importer of soybeans, purchasing 61% of the world’s traded soybean supplies over the last five marketing years, according to data from the American Soybean Association (ASA). China halted purchases of American soybeans this spring in retaliation to the Trump administration’s tariffs war.
ASA said the U.S. has historically served as a primary supplier for China, as American soybean farmers exported an average of 28% of their crop to China before the 2018 trade war. That figure dropped to a low of 11% in the 2018-19 crop year, but recovered during the pandemic, reaching 31% in 2020-21 before declining to 22% in 2023-24.
The damage is huge – China accounted for about 52% (985 million bushels) of the US$24.5 billion of American soybean exports last year. Most of the soybeans China imports are for animal feed. Over the past few years, the country has increasingly turned to South America, buying beans grown in Brazil and Argentina. It was the easiest way to teach Trump and the U.S. a lesson that China has cards to play.
By shifting away from U.S. producers to countries such as Brazil and Argentina, President Xi Jinping is hurting Trump where it hurts. Brad Arnold, a multi-generational soybean farmer in southwestern Missouri, said – “We rely on trade with other countries, specifically China, to buy our soybeans.” He said that China’s halt on U.S. soybean purchases “has huge impacts on our business and our bottom line.”
Arnold also shared why it’s extremely difficult to replace China, and why farmers prefer to sell crops in the market as opposed to receiving relief – “You can’t take our number one customer, shut them off and just overnight find a replacement. And it’s not like you can quit farming one day and then all of a sudden go do something else. There’s a huge financial commitment tied up in not only the year-to-year efforts, but the land also.”
China, the largest single destination for U.S. soybean exports, hasn’t booked any U.S. soybean purchases in months. This makes soybean a potent weapon in Beijing’s trade war with Washington. From January through August this year, Chinese buyers purchased just over 200 million bushels of U.S. soybeans, compared with almost 1 billion bushels over the same period last year.
Jerry Schmitz, executive director of the South Dakota Soybean Association, said U.S. soybean prices are down more than a dollar per bushel from last year, from over US$11 down to US$10, with South Dakota prices another 80 cents to US$1.35 lower. Local grain elevators are struggling because exports through the Pacific Northwest into Asian countries have slowed to a trickle.
Based on the number of soybean acres planted this year, Schmitz said a US$1 drop in price equates to about US$250 million of lost income for South Dakota farmers. A tariff is a tax paid by importers, with the cost often passed along in prices charged to customers. But the impact of tariffs on farmers goes beyond the obvious. An example is a rise in fertilizer prices, “partly due to inflation, but exacerbated by the tariffs.”
“We’ll see the bottom drop out if we don’t get a deal with China soon. There doesn’t seem to be any urgency on China’s side, and more urgency coming from the farm community in the U.S.” – said Ron Kindred, who farms 1,700 acres of corn and soybeans in central Illinois. He has a contract to sell about 40% of his harvest, but the other 60% is a gamble. Prices in his area are already dropping.
Farm leaders and state officials are creating new domestic soybean uses, including a US$500 million soybean processing plant in Mitchell that will mostly use soybeans to make renewable diesel and livestock feed. Still, it won’t replace the demand of a country with 1.4 billion people who like soybean-fed pork. U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, admits – “We need to get the Chinese market back at some point because we sell a ton,”
However, with South American soybean producers in Argentina and Brazil keep expanding every year to take advantage of China’s demand for soybeans amid Beijing-Washington trade war, the Chinese government is watching with popcorn and is in no hurry to rescue the American farmers, who happen to be Trump voters. If American soybeans aren’t competing in the global marketplace, it will impact the market share of U.S. farmers.
To reduce U.S. farmers’ reliance on China, some U.S. farmers have sought ways to travel to Vietnam and the Philippines to try to persuade their livestock farmers to buy more American soybeans. “We can’t replace that market overnight. But we’ve got some success stories in recent years,” – said Kindred. The burning question is whether they can find new markets big and fast enough before it’s too late.
The answer is obvious. It was China’s demand that saw soybean acreage in the U.S. grew nearly 40% from 1995 to 2024. The next two largest buyers of American soybeans – the European Union and Mexico – account for about US$5 billion in combined annual sales. Countries such as Vietnam, Egypt and Bangladesh have increased their purchases of U.S. soybeans in recent years, but it isn’t enough.
Farming’s recent economics are bad enough that some are already calling it quits. Dean Buchholz, a corn and soybean farmer in DeKalb County, Ill., said his fertilizer costs are up 20% to 30% from last year. Because of rising costs, low crop prices and some health concerns, this will be his last year farming, he said. He plans to rent out his land next year.
As of October 9, 2025, U.S. soybean prices have plummeted below the cost of production for many, leading to immense financial strain and an unprecedented glut of unsold crops, with China placing effectively zero new-crop export orders for U.S. soybeans for the upcoming 2025/26 marketing season. This dramatic reorientation of global agricultural trade flows is not a temporary disruption, but a deeply entrenched reality.
Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post last week that he would be meeting with Xi Jinping soon and “soybeans will be a major topic of discussion” – giving away hints that soybean could be China’s another trump card just like rare earth minerals. Without China’s purchase, U.S. soybeans sitting in bins too long is at the mercy of weather and pests.
Christopher Wolf, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University, said – “China is just so big that when they buy things, it matters – and when they don’t, it matters.” But the damage has been done, and it could be permanent. With US$8.3 billion invested in Latin American logistics, China controls 64% of its soybean import networks, reducing reliance on the U.S.
The soybean industry has been warning for months that China’s exit from the market would be devastating, calling on the Trump administration to come up with a trade deal that spares farmers. A bailout is “just a Band-Aid”. Most farmers would prefer an open market, without tariffs, for their products, allowing the market to dictate prices. They don’t want a trade war or a tariff dispute.
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October 10th, 2025 by financetwitter
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