Unsurprisingly, the United States, after tasting the anti-China bitter fruit, began to put the rescue grass on China.
On October 1st, Gretchen Whitmer, governor of *, Michigan, USA, delivered a speech, accusing the Trump administration of its tariff policy, arguing that it was "unwise and unnecessary" to fall out with its allies, and believing that China benefited the most from it.
On October 1, Trump posted on social media, saying I understand the situation of American soybean farmers very well. At present, China does not buy American soybeans for negotiation purposes, causing American farmers to "suffer."Trump also said that he would not spend some money to subsidize soybean farmers, and in the next negotiations with China, he asked China to implement the agreement to purchase American soybeans to alleviate the "crisis".
From Trump’s words, two things can be seen: First, Trump put the cause of the crisis of the U.S. bean farming to China, and second, Trump is too confident.
How to get married to China?
Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, repeated at the agricultural show in September that "American soybeans are facing a crisis", and his voice was full of anxiety. The report in his hand is clear: 50% of American soybeans depend on exports, while China once bought 60% of its total exports, more than all other overseas customers combined. But in the 2025 harvest season, China's order column is "zero". For four consecutive weeks, the statistics of the United States Department of Agriculture did not have any purchase records from China.
What makes American soybean farmers even more desperate is that this "zero order" is not an emergency. It is the result of the Trump administration's three increases in tariffs in seven years. When tariffs were first imposed on China in 2018, Raglan stormed the White House with a petition from the Soybean Association, warning that it would cost the industry nearly US$20 billion. What is ridiculous is that after Trump returned to the White House in 2025, instead of learning from his lessons, he soared tariffs from 34% to 145%, in an attempt to use "extreme pressure" to force China to make concessions.
This almost crazy operation directly leads to the loss of price competitiveness of U.S. soybeans, after China imposed a 25% retaliatory tariff on soybeans, the cost per ton is almost 300 yuan higher than the Brazilian soybeans, and importers naturally vote with their feet. Michigan’s warehouses are now full of late-market soybeans, and Chicago’s futures prices have fallen to a five-year low, with bankruptcy claims in the Midwest rising by 35 percent.
However, Trump turned black and white upside down on social media, saying that this was "China deliberately did not buy it for negotiation purposes". Frankly speaking, even American farmers don't believe this kind of rhetoric. Farmers in Iowa cried on social media: It was tariffs that ruined everything, and I could only crush the best crops and bury them in the ground.
With two-thirds of the world's orders, why does China need to be "you must"?
Trump dares to raise taxes willfully, because he always holds an outdated cognition: China can't live without American soybeans.
But he forgot that China has long been not the buyer that can only passively accept supply, as the world's largest soybean consumer, China has to buy 60% of the world's soybean a year, this volume is enough to reshape the global supply chain pattern.
After the first trade war in 2018, China began to accelerate the construction of a "Brazilian-driven, multi-national supplementation" procurement network. By 2024, Brazilian soybeans had accounted for 69% of total Chinese imports, while the U.S. share fell from 34% to 22%. In 2025, it was completely reversed: In August, the share of Brazilian soybeans rose to 85%, Argentina, with the abolition of export duties, took the order of China's 10 ships of soybeans at once, while the U.S. share was less than 5%.
More importantly, China is in the "open source" while still in the "flow", domestic researchers developed "soya reduction replacement" technology has popularized in livestock, reducing the proportion of soybeans in pig feed from 20% to 10%, can save tens of millions of tons of soybeans a year, equivalent to the past imports from the United States more than 70 percent.
Want China to take action? Show sincerity first
"Can China help?" Trump shouted on social media, asking China to double its soybean purchases. Republican lawmakers frequently contacted the China Embassy, hoping to "handle special matters on a special basis." Raglan even wrote a monthly letter to the White House urging that the soybean issue be solved first. But they seem to have forgotten that negotiations are never unilateral demands.
China’s attitude is very clear, and a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said very clearly on September 25: "If the United States really wants to expand soybean trade, it must first cancel the relevant unreasonable tariffs."This phrase breaks the core of the problem: it is the U.S. tariff barriers that block their own soybeans, and the bell is still required to ring the bell.
But the cancellation of tariffs alone is not enough, the demand of the two sides is not at all on a single channel: the Chinese side wants to talk about fundamental issues such as the structure of China-US relations, tariff barriers, the situation in the Taiwan Sea; and in the eyes of Trump only soybean orders, only want to stabilize the agricultural state warehouse at the lowest cost.
Of course, China never refuses reasonable cooperation, but the premise is that the United States must show sincerity.
According to Xi, there are at least three things that the United States must do: first, completely abolish unreasonable tariffs on China, allowing the U.S. soybeans to restore price competitiveness; second, stop politicizing trade issues and no longer use agricultural products as a tool of pressure; third, show respect on issues involving China's core interests, and create a good atmosphere for economic and trade cooperation.
As for Trump's fantasy of "price reduction promotions", it is actually a hypocritical proposition. Argentina, Brazil and soybeans have occupied the market by policy advantage, and the United States is not enough to take back the share, just by price reduction.
So, there is no winner in the trade war, reason is the only way out. The Trump administration still wants to pressure, but this path will not be as good as it was in the past. Now Trump falls into two difficulties: the cancellation of tariffs will shake the image of his "hard against China"; not cancelled, the stockpiles of the six agricultural states of the Midwest will not beined. Those who once supported his bean farmers, now have been publicly "voting tendencies", which is undoubtedly a deadly blow to Trump.