{"id":284880,"date":"2025-11-15T14:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T14:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/284880\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T14:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T14:47:10","slug":"usda-data-casts-doubt-on-chinas-soybean-purchase-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/284880\/","title":{"rendered":"USDA data casts doubt on China\u2019s soybean purchase promises"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins on a combine with farm owner Tyler Everett on Oct. 30, 2025. Beijing’s tariff on American soybeans remains at about 24 per cent, despite a 10-percentage-point reduction following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.Michael Conroy\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank\u2019s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,\u201d Ehmke said.<\/p>\n

Beijing has yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached \u201cconsensus\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the lack of Chinese purchases and whether farmers can still expect a significant aid package like Trump promised earlier.<\/p>\n

The Chinese tariff on American beans remains high at about 24 per cent, despite a 10-percentage-point reduction following the summit.<\/p>\n

Soybean prices fell sharply by 23 cents to US$11.24 per bushel Friday. Ehmke said \u201cthat\u2019s the market being shocked by the lack of Chinese demand that was confirmed in USDA data today.\u201d Prices are still higher than they were before the agreement when they were selling for US$10.60 per bushel, but the price may continue to drop unless there are significant new purchases.<\/p>\n

Before the trade agreement, Trump had said 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\u2019s not clear whether the administration will offer farmers aid like Trump did in his first administration.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping talk as they leave after a bilateral meeting in Busan on Oct. 30, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein\/Reuters<\/p>\n

American farmers have been through this before after Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Soybean prices are actually still a little higher than they were a year ago even without China\u2019s normal purchases of roughly one-quarter of the U.S. crop. That\u2019s because this year\u2019s soybean crop is a little smaller while domestic demand remained strong with the continued growth in biodiesel production.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Ragland said he\u2019s still optimistic that China will follow through on the purchases, but it\u2019s hard to be confident in that right now with so few sales reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to assume they won\u2019t. But it\u2019s going to be a wonderful day when we actually deliver those soybeans, and when there\u2019s my money in hand and so forth and the transaction\u2019s complete,\u201d Ragland said.<\/p>\n

China is the world\u2019s largest buyer of soybeans. China bought more than US$12.5-billion worth of the nearly US$24.5-billion worth of U.S. soybeans that were exported last year.<\/p>\n

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 per cent of China\u2019s imports last year, while the U.S. share fell to 21 per cent, World Bank data shows.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still looking at sharp losses and the red ink as we figure budgets for 26 is still very much in play,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins on a combine with farm owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,45,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-284880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}