The American Soybean Association (ASA) has recently written a letter to President Trump urging him to remove retaliatory duties and seek significant soybean purchase commitments in a new trade deal with China.
ASA warns that retaliatory tariffs are shutting America’s soybean producers out of their largest export market going into this year’s harvest.
Mike Steenhoek, Executive Director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, says there are several reasons why China has become the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans over the past 25 years.
“One of the bullet points you would write would be large population. Another bullet point would be increasing per capita income. A third bullet point would be insatiable demand for pork for human consumption. You would have another bullet point that would say insatiable demand for poultry for human consumption. And then the final one would be cooking methodology utilizes a lot of oil for frying, and that, in a nutshell, is the Chinese market,” he says.
Steenhoek admits that the Chinese haven’t always engaged in “Fair Trade” with the U.S.
“There are, you know, areas of behavior that China has engaged in for a number of years, that you know, rightfully so have elicited concern from the United States. And those areas of dispute need to be prosecuted, they need to be negotiated, and we need to come to a resolution for it.”
But, Steenhoek adds that the trade relationship between the U.S. and China is far too valuable for America’s soybean producers.
“And one of the things that’s going well and has gone well with the relationship between the United States and China is that you have a group of individuals called farmers that are growing food, not only for our domestic needs, but also in part, to help supply for the protein and nutritional needs of China and a number of other countries. That’s something that’s going well, and so we think that’s something that should be preserved
and protected.”
President Trump has extended the deadline for reaching a new trade agreement with China to November 10.
Because of the recent trade dispute, China is reportedly buying far more of its soybeans from Brazil. So far, China has not pre-purchased U.S. soybeans ahead of the upcoming harvest, which has worried both soybean producers and commodity traders.
According to the American Soybean Association, China bought $13.2 billion worth of U.S. soybeans during the 2023/2024 marketing year accounting for about 54-percent of all U.S. soybean exports.
CLICK HERE to read ASA’s letter to President Trump.
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