Trump’s China Soybean Deal Is Less Than It Appears

A combine harvests soybeans on Oct. 14, 2025 in Marion, Ky. China has purchased between 25 and 30 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in recent years, according to the American Soybean Association. (Jan Sonnenmair / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump on Thursday touted his trade deal as a major win for U.S. soybean farmers. But even if China upholds the agreement as described by the administration, U.S. farmers at most are likely merely to see a return to the status quo before the 2025 trade war began rather than a meaningful breakthrough.

As part of the trade deal, China committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans this year, as well as to purchasing a minimum of 25 million metric tons of the crop annually for the next three years, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria on Thursday. Bessent said he expected Trump in the future would convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to increase their commitment.

“Our Farmers will be very happy! In fact, as I said once before during my first Administration, Farmers should immediately go out and buy more land and larger tractors,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, also pointing to other agricultural products China said it would buy.

However, the 25 million tons to which China committed are roughly comparable to what the country purchased in 2024, before the trade war started, noted Beacon Policy Advisors analyst Owen Tedford.

“As much as they’re touting it as a win, my perception is that this is just a return to the status quo,” said Tedford, who noted that in practice China might see the 25 million as more of a “ceiling than a floor” and that it was unclear how the U.S. could enforce the deal.

The Treasury Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A White House official said that the 25 million metric ton purchase agreement is a “floor not ceiling” and that the administration “is also pursuing market access for soybeans and other agricultural products in other markets.”

“That effort to find new markets for American ag products is not being put on the back burner,” said the official, who also said Trump’s deregulatory actions have helped farmers.

Other countries had signed trade deals to buy U.S. soybeans “to the tune of another 19 million metric tons,” Bessent said, without specifying the countries or the time frame for the purchases. The U.S. exported a total of 52 million metric tons of soybeans in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The deal is a “very positive development,” the American Soybean Association said in a statement. China has purchased between 25 and 30 million tons in recent years, and “today’s commitments lay a strong foundation to return to those traditional volumes,” the association said.

If China does purchase 12 million metric tons of soybeans between now and January, that would be enough to hit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s export target for the year, said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist for StoneX.

Hitting that target was generally expected by the market and “probably doesn’t justify any real, sustained rally from where we’re at,” Suderman said.

Soybean futures after Bessent’s comments rose about 2% on Thursday but were roughly in line with where they traded on Wednesday.

The decline of soybean purchases by China has been a consistent source of tension since the first Trump administration. The so-called U.S.-China Phase One trade deal, struck in 2020, committed China to buying $32 billion worth of agricultural products, including soybeans, above 2017 levels in 2020 and 2021. China never reached those targets.

In contrast, the new deal, as described by Bessent, specifies China’s commitment in metric tons, rather than dollars, a move that will alleviate pressure on the country if soybean prices stay low, Suderman said. The Phase One deal was difficult for China to live up to in part because low soybean prices pushed its purchase commitment above what the country needed.

In the longer term, the deal won’t do anything to stop China’s strategic goal of weaning itself off U.S. soybeans, Suderman said. Over the last several years, China has helped build up the soybean industry in South America to make it less dependent on the U.S., which it sees as an adversary. The new deal doesn’t even necessarily mean that China buys less soybeans from Brazil or other countries. Instead, it could use those purchases to build reserves and more quickly cut off U.S. purchases when the deal ends, Suderman said.

A decade or so ago, the U.S. was exporting more than 30 million metric tons of year of soybeans to China, but those days are probably gone, Tedford said.

“If I was a soybean farmer in the Midwest, I’d be working to decrease my reliance on exports to China,” Tedford said.

Write to Joe Light at joe.light@barrons.com