Iowa soybean farmers say US–China deal is encouraging, hope for stronger trade relationships
President Donald Trump announced a new trade agreement with China, which will reduce tariffs from 57% to 47%. The president also stated China would immediately resume purchasing American soybeans. Iowa soybean farmers say this is encouraging to hear, while also noting they hope to see continued growth when it comes to strengthening trade relationships with countries.
“At this point in this marketing year, we have sold zero bushels of soybeans before to China, which is highly unusual,” said Grant Kimberley, a farmer and the Iowa Soybean Association’s senior director of market development.
Kimberley said the normal export window for U.S. soybeans to China runs from September to early February. He says normally, 400 million to 500 million bushels of soybeans would have been on the books at this point and a lot of them shipped to China by now.
“It appears we will not completely make that up this year, but at least there's the fact that we’re moving things forward and starting more of a normal export season at this point. That’s a positive,” Kimberley said.
The Iowa Soybean Association said every year for the better part of a decade, China has purchased 28 to 36 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans. The last two years soybean trade has gone down.
However, the recently announced agreement includes minimum purchase commitments of 12 million metric tons, which is 441 million bushels, this marketing year. Each year for the next three years, the minimum purchase commitments are 25 million metric tons, which is 918.5 million bushels.
“We will probably sell China maybe 400 or 500 million bushels this year and then hopefully next year we’ll get back to 800 or 900 million bushels and hopefully that’s just a minimum,” Kimberley said.
“We haven't been selling to our biggest customer in months and we've done a lot of damage,” said Aaron Lehman, a farmer and the president of the Iowa Farmers Union. “So I hope that this is a sign that we're going to get to get a pragmatic trade policy that's not chaotic, that doesn't use farmers as pawns in political games, and really can mean real returns all the way on to the farm.”
Lehman tells vlog that when hearing about the agreement between the U.S. and China and how it impacts the soybean market, he was a little cautious in getting too optimistic about the news because of damage he says has been done to the markets.
Lehman says five years ago, the U.S. entered into a "chaotic trade period" and lost a lot of customers.
“Those customers overseas went to farmers in other countries and started buying their grain and developing their infrastructure. A lot of those buyers never came back. So we've had damaged trade relationships for some time and trying to build them back up,” Lehman said. “This agreement might get us closer to real trade relations, but we’re not sure yet.”
The Iowa Soybean Association says it will continue to work with the Trump administration and Iowa’s Congressional delegation to continue strengthening the industry. In a release, the organization listed several ways to see this through, including: growing domestic demand by finalizing the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed 2026 Renewable Fuel Obligations and diversifying international demand through new trade partnerships.
Lehman tells vlog he hopes to see trade relationships strengthened and lawmakers and policy leaders speaking up on the impact policies have on farmers.
“We need to make sure that whatever agreement we do, it helps — not just those who are the large multi-national companies trading our grains for us — but the results come all the way back to the farm so that we have a fairer structure to trade under. We get fair prices for what we grow,” Lehman said.
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