U.S. fights with Brazil for China’s giant soybean market

BEIJING — As Brazil takes a greater share of Chinese soybean purchases away from American farmers, the U.S. is trying to win back buyers by emphasizing crop quality.

“Soybean production in North America and soybean production in South America is very different,” Carlos Salinas, executive director, East Asia, at the U.S. Soybean Export Council said in a presentation Tuesday at the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing.

He compared a range of weather factors between a city in Brazil and one in the U.S. state of Illinois, such as rainfall in the 30 days ahead of harvest: 231 millimeters versus 72 mm.

“That impacts crop condition. That impacts quality,” he said.

The half-day event for “advancing a sustainable and resilient U.S.-China soybean supply chain” was co-organized with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

“What we really encourage buyers in soy to do is to make sure they’re educating themselves on this to go deeper,” Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council told CNBC on the sidelines of the event, noting new ways to measure quality and nutrition, especially for animal feed.

American soybeans have become a bargaining chip in the escalation of U.S.-China trade tensions over the last several years. Beijing, the world’s largest soybean importer, has also diversified its sourcing to Brazil and Argentina in an effort to ensure food security.

While the U.S. and Brazil each accounted for around 40% of China’s soybean imports a decade ago, Brazil started to take a far larger share in 2018 after the first round of U.S. tariffs on China, according CNBC calculations of Chinese customs data accessed through Wind Information.

As of the first five months of 2026, more than 60% of China’s soybean imports came from Brazil, 23% from the U.S. and 10% from Argentina, the data showed.

U.S. soybean exports to China plunged 76% last year to $3.1 billion, down sharply from a peak of $17.9 billion in 2022, according to official U.S. figures. At 7.37 million metric tons, U.S. soybeans remained the largest American agricultural export to China during the last calendar year.

Convincing Chinese buyers to ramp up purchases will take time.

Last month, the White House said China would buy at least $17 billion of U.S. agricultural goods annually through 2028, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. That amount would be “in addition to the soybean purchase commitments that it made in October 2025.”

After a Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea last fall, the U.S. said China agreed to buy at least 25 million metric tons of American soybeans in each of the following three years.

China has bought all 12 million metric tons of American soybeans that it agreed to purchase in the marketing year ending August 2026, and…