After leaders' summit built consensus, growers hopeful of return to strong agricultural exports
During United States President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing last month, both sides reached a positive consensus on market access for certain agricultural products. The two parties agreed in principle to incorporate those products into a framework arrangement for reciprocal tariff reductions, and establish targets to expand agricultural trade.
On China's General Administration of Customs website, hundreds of expired licenses for US beef, pork and poultry plants were renewed soon after Trump's visit. The trade in meat was resumed shortly after the summit, an encouraging sign for US farmers.
Regardless of what size US farm exports to China will turn out to be in the next three years, one thing is clear — China and the US are working to jointly lower tariffs and expand access to agricultural products in their respective markets.
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The news has been welcomed by US farmers, many of whom take it as a new beginning. Trump's tariffs halted the flow of farm goods between the two countries last year, following a previous stalling in 2018.
Matt Wagenson, a farmer in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, and vice-president of the Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board, told local news outlet WPR that improved trade numbers would be "a huge help".
"We're always looking to increase our free trade across the world, and China is just a crucial part of that free trade," he said.
Dave Pfarr, a soybean farmer near Le Sueur, Minnesota, said that from the producers' perspective, "we would love to get them back as a customer". "Because they are a big importer of our proteins, primarily soybeans and soybean meal," he told local CBS News in mid-May.
But others in US agriculture are more cautious. China-US agricultural trade has experienced a rollercoaster ride in the past decade, largely due to Trump's tariff policy.
"I think we are cautiously optimistic when it comes to these things because we've been on both sides of this equation. You know, the first time we went through the tariff crisis, we lost 20 percent market share," Todd Main, director of market development at the Illinois Soybean Association, told Ag Daily in late May.
Soybean sales seesaw
Before the first trade war, China's appetite for US soybeans had grown steadily, driven by a rising middle-income group that was eating more pork, more poultry and more edible oils — all of which depended on soybeans as a feedstock.
The numbers were impressive. In the seven years leading up to the 2018 trade war, 28 percent of all US soybean production on average went to China, according to the American Soybean Association.
By 2016 and 2017, US soybean exports to China were running at $10.5 billion and $12.2 billion, respectively, accounting for 62 percent and 57 percent of all US soybean exports, according to data from the US International Trade Commission.
Broader agricultural trade was also substantial.
From 2012 to 2017, China purchased US farm products worth $24 billion to $29 billion annually, about 20 percent of all US agricultural exports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The trade relationship had grown intertwined — China needed US grain to feed its livestock, US farmers needed Chinese demand to justify the acreage they were planting.
The symbiotic relation was abruptly interrupted when the first Trump administration imposed tariffs on billions of Chinese goods in April 2018. Beijing imposed a 25 percent retaliatory tariff on US soybeans.
The effect was immediate and severe. US farm exports to China dropped to $13 billion in 2018 from $24 billion in 2017, a reduction of almost 46 percent.
US soybeans, the No 1 farm export to China, fell much more — from $12.2 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2018 — a 75 percent collapse in a single year.
China was pushed to look elsewhere for its soybean supply, leading to a structural shift in the country's agricultural imports strategy.
In 2012, a severe US drought had forced Chinese buyers to turn to Brazil to fill their supply needs, and the South American country demonstrated that it could reliably deliver supplies. Since 2013, Brazil's soybean exports to China have grown steadily.
Conversely, China's demand for soybeans has helped Brazil to grow its soybean capacity. Brazil overtook the US to become the world's largest soybean producer in 2017.
When US soybean exports to China dropped to 8 million metric tons in 2018, Brazil sold 69 MMT of soybeans to China, speeding up Brazil's share of soybean exports to China.
By 2024, Brazil expanded China shipments to 73 MMT, accounting for 70 percent of China's soybean imports, while US exports represented just 21 percent.
Brazil now produces nearly 40 percent of the global soybean harvest while the US produces about 28 percent, according to analysis by the American Soybean Association.
As trade began to recover under the Phase One agreement, US soybean exports to China grew and peaked at 34 MMT in 2020, about 55 percent of what Brazil shipped to China.
The US' tariff escalation last year was even more brutal. When Trump imposed a 34 percent tariff on Chinese goods in April 2025, the retaliatory tariffs from China sunk US soybean exports deeper to a mere 7 MMT.
"When that was announced, soybean prices basically collapsed," Mike Cerny, a farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin, told PBS in April last year. "If you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK. If you had a mortgage due, or payments due, or cash flow needs, and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough."
The financial loss for soybean growers was significant. Even with federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per acre of soybeans in 2025, according to the American Soybean Association.
Similarly, US beef exports to China fell from a peak of $2.76 billion in 2022 to $977 million in 2025. Overall, US farm exports to China, which peaked at $41 billion in 2022, dropped to a mere $10 billion in 2025, the lowest since 2008.
Overall US farm exports were down by 3 percent in 2025, primarily driven by losses in soybean exports, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Farm debt rises
The trade losses have cascaded through the farm economy.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City found that farmers were taking larger operating loans and taking longer to repay them, a report by the American Farm Bureau Federation said. Nearly 40 percent more farm operating loans were opened in the fourth quarter of 2025, compared with the same period in 2024.
Total farm debt reached a record $624.7 billion in early 2026 — up $30.8 billion, or 5 percent, from the year before, according to the federation. It was the second consecutive year of 5 percent farm debt growth.
Critically, the debt growth was not from investment or expansion but from necessity: Farmers were borrowing simply to cover input costs.
"Farm debt continues to rise as producers rely on borrowing to manage elevated operating costs and uneven cash flow," the report concluded. The situation was, in the federation's assessment, "a generational downturn rather than a temporary slowdown".
In addition, more farmers filed for bankruptcy in 2025, the federation said. A total of 315 farm bankruptcies were filed in the calendar year, up 46 percent from 2024.
The US Midwest and Southeast were the hardest hit, with the regions seeing 121 and 105 bankruptcy cases filed, respectively. The numbers represented a 70 percent year-on-year increase in filings in the Midwest, and a 69 percent rise in the Southeast.
In addition, the number of US farms was reduced by 15,000 in 2025, reflecting a broader trend in farm closures, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
This year, US farmers have been hit by another major shock with the US-Iran military conflict sending fuel and fertilizer costs sharply higher.
A survey of 400 farmers, conducted by researchers at the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture in late March, found that almost half said their farm operations were financially worse than a year earlier.
With the rising price of land, rent, equipment, fertilizer and fuel, US farmers have been struggling with thinning margins. In February, before the start of the Iran conflict, the USDA projected the US farm income will slip lower in 2026.
Americans miss pie
The reality is that China's overall farm imports have been growing steadily over the past nine years — from $125 billion in 2017 to $207 billion in 2025, with a peak of $234.8 billion in 2022, primarily due to prices.
In the same period, however, US farm exports to China have been going through ups and downs, but producers have largely missed out on the growth in China's farm imports.
The Beijing summit could produce positive outcomes for US farmers. If China ends up purchasing $17 billion of US farm goods annually, plus 25 MMT of soybeans as the White House announced, it would take the volume of US exports to China to about $28 billion to $30 billion a year.
However, that number barely matches the volume preceding the 2025 "Liberation Day" announcement of US tariffs, and is much lower than the $41 billion peak achieved in 2022.
The structural shift caused by Trump's tariff policy has US citizens worried about the prospects for long-term farm trade with China.
"If you look out a decade or so, we know that long-term China is not going to be the dominant buyer that it once was," said Main, director of market development at the Illinois Soybean Association. "And so, we have to pivot."
Kenneth Quinn, president emeritus of the World Food Prize Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa, is more optimistic.
"In my opinion, the reference to a new 'constructive strategic stability' with 'moderate cooperation' and 'manageable differences' can provide an extended period of predictable situations, which Midwest farmers strongly desire," Quinn told China Daily.
The takeaway from the May summit is that it allows US farmers to make decisions before planting time, based on a clear understanding of the costs involved throughout the growing cycle, he said. "After a year of widely fluctuating tariff levels, having stable costs of the main ingredients involved in producing a crop will be a most welcome tranquil period for farmers in the American heartland," Quinn said.
The prospects for US-China farm trade largely hinge on big-picture bilateral relations.
Quinn said that one measure of the summit's impact will be whether China stays on the US Secretary of Commerce's List of Adversaries along with Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Cuba and Russia.
"If China is not removed from that list … it may be difficult to expect to see large increases in purchases of US agricultural commodities or other significant business deals," he said.
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The most important thing is for the US State Department and China's Foreign Ministry to work on the goals and possible outcomes for any follow-up state visit of President Xi Jinping to the US. During the summit in Beijing, Trump invited Xi to visit the US later this year.
Quinn said a presidential summit provides an opportunity to answer a "fundamental question" in the US-China relationship by announcing a partnership to address the "greatest challenge humanity has ever encountered".
"Can we sustainably feed the 9.5 billion to 10 billion people who will be on our planet by 2050?" he said.
There may not be a time in the coming decades when the leaders of the US and China are both positioned to take dramatic steps to achieve that, Quinn said.
"My hope is that President Xi and President Trump will seize this opportunity and strive to achieve historic greatness by taking the first steps toward building peace through agriculture," he said.
Contact the writers at mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com
