US President Donald Trump said he hopes China will massively step up its purchases of American soybeans — comments that come a day before a trade truce expires.
“China is worried about its shortage of soybeans,” Trump wrote on the Truth Social website on Monday. “I hope China will quickly quadruple its soybean orders. This is also a way of substantially reducing China’s Trade Deficit with the USA.”
Trump also thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the post, without saying why.
The president’s push is happening as US farmers are just weeks from their next harvest, boosting supplies available to sell. China is the world’s top buyer of the oilseed and usually ranks as the biggest customer of US soy farmers, a trade valued at more than US$12 billion in 2024. However, US government data as of late July show the Asian nation has refrained from booking any cargoes for the upcoming season that starts in September as tensions between the two sides linger.
Soybean futures in Chicago jumped after Trump’s post. Corn and wheat also rose.
Agriculture has been a key issue in the trade dispute between the two sides, with China turning to crops from South America and elsewhere to meet its needs. China agreed to increase buying of US agricultural goods like soybeans during the so-called phase one trade agreement reached during Trump’s first term, although Beijing ultimately fell well short of the purchase targets in that pact.
Trump’s remarks spurred fresh optimism that bilateral trade between China and the US could soon revive, with assets like Chinese equities also rising. US soybeans have also gotten cheaper than Brazilian cargoes as the influx of fresh supply nears.
Beijing faces an August 12 deadline before its tariff truce with the US expires, though the Trump administration has signaled that is likely to be extended.
China has long fretted about its supplies of soybeans, which are a key element of the nation’s diet and livestock feed. The country has stepped up purchases of soybeans from its top supplier Brazil in recent months, and is also testing trial cargoes of soybean meal from Argentina, to secure supplies of the animal feed ingredient
“The move to buy Argentina soybean meal is just a temporary fix,” said Hanver Li, chief analyst with China-based commodity consultancy Shanghai JC Intelligence Co. “If the China-US talks go well, it wouldn’t be a long term trade pattern.”
This is typically the time of year when China’s purchases begin shifting to the Northern Hemisphere. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect the US Department of Agriculture to boost its outlook for the domestic harvest in a report due Tuesday.
Still, there is little sign that China is concerned about a soybean shortage, despite Trump’s comments, said Vitor Pistoia, senior grains and oilseeds analyst at Rabobank. If trade relations don’t improve, the nation would be able to source its annual supply entirely from South America if necessary, bypassing the US, he said.
“When you add what Brazil has, what Argentina has,” with what Uruguay and Paraguay have, “all those guys have enough to supply China,” he said in an interview.
While China and the United States have been trying to work out a trade deal, other issues have been complicating their relationship. Last week, China defended its imports of Russian oil, pushing back against US threats of new tariffs after Washington slapped secondary levies on India for buying energy from Moscow.
And on Sunday, a social media account affiliated with state-run China Central Television that regularly signals Beijing’s thinking about trade slammed an Nvidia Corp chip’s supposed security vulnerabilities and inefficiency. In July, the Trump administration reversed course to allow Nvidia to sell the H20 AI accelerator to China.
by Hallie Gu & Ben Westcott, Bloomberg
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