China stops purchasing soybeans from the USA, and Brazil takes up space from the Americans

Even as American farmers produce competitively priced crops, China has gradually reduced its dependence on the United States, turning to Brazil, Argentina and other suppliers
American Farm Bureau Federation

In this period of 2025, Brazil had sales of more than 77 million tons of soybeans to China. According to American producers, these numbers “highlight how South America intervened to dominate the market and displace American farmers.”

Argentina also sought to boost sales by briefly removing its soybean export tax, only to reinstate it days later after export earnings reached the $7 billion threshold.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Donald Trump’s administration is preparing “substantial support for our farmers, especially soybean producers.” This could be announced this Tuesday.

Furthermore, Trump tried to appease soybean producers, who were increasingly angered by the president’s stance. “Our country’s soybean producers are being harmed because China, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, is not buying,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, on Wednesday. “We make so much money from tariffs that we are going to take a small part of that money and help our farmers”, he assured.

In Trump’s first trade war with China in 2019, he gave American farmers more than $22 billion in aid payments.