China has rare earth metals. The United States and Brazil have soybeans.
For all the chokeholds China maintains on global supply chains, it is overwhelmingly dependent on soybeans from other parts of the world. China imports three-fifths of all the soybeans traded on international markets. Now with China and the United States locked in a tense standoff over tariffs, soybeans have emerged as a central dispute between the trading partners.
China has been boycotting purchases of U.S. soybeans since late May to show displeasure with President Trump’s imposition of tariffs on imports from China. The pain is being felt in Midwest states, especially Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Indiana. For the first time in many years, American farmers are preparing to harvest their crop this fall with no purchase orders from China.
“The further into the autumn we get without reaching an agreement with China on soybeans, the worse the impacts will be on U.S. soybean farmers,” the American Soybean Association warned in a letter to Mr. Trump on Aug. 19.
But China also faces risks in the standoff. Brazil, which will harvest its crop early next year, is the only other country with enough soybeans to meet Chinese demand and enough trains and port capacity to move those soybeans to China.
“I think they could probably go without American soybeans this autumn, but if Brazil has some drought or flood that affects their crops next year, it would put China in a difficult position,” said Darin Friedrichs, the managing director of Sitonia Consulting, a research firm specializing in Chinese agriculture.
In China, a record soybean crop is expected this year and farmers like Zhou Ping are thriving. With demand strong, prices are rising, and this summer brought an almost perfect balance of sunshine and rain.
“This year’s is the best soybean crop I’ve seen in years,” he said, standing at the edge of his dark green field of thigh-high plants.
Yet even with a likely harvest of 21 million tons this year, China will need to import another 100 to 105 million tons.
China’s immense need for imported soybeans — enough each year to fill the Superdome in New Orleans more than 30 times — reflects a shift toward protein-rich diets as living standards have soared over the past 30 years. China now raises vast numbers of pigs and chickens.
China imports genetically modified soybeans to feed these animals. Genetic modifications are almost completely banned in China, and the soybeans grown in China are mainly used for human consumption, notably in tofu and soy milk.
Before Mr. Trump’s first trade war with Beijing in 2018, China bought a quarter to a third of the American crop. China has since tried to develop alternatives. But only Brazil has really managed to increase supplies significantly to the Chinese market.
China bought 71 percent of its soybean imports last year from Brazil, when near-perfect weather led to a record crop.
The United States supplied 21 percent of China’s total imported soybeans last year. The crop is nonetheless the largest remaining export from the United States to China. Beijing has systematically replaced imports of farm equipment and other advanced manufactured goods from the United States through a program, Made in China 2025, intended to boost the country’s self-reliance.
China has made a concerted effort to grow more soybeans, deploying extensive government subsidies. Despite this year’s successful harvest, the results of that effort have been mixed.
The country’s main growers are in Heilongjiang Province, in northeastern China next to Russia’s Siberia. But they have been slow to increase output.
The government pays farmers in much of Heilongjiang a subsidy equivalent to about $17 an acre to grow corn and about $300 to grow soybeans. Yet in villages near Harbin, the provincial capital, and near Heihe, on the Amur River border with Russia, most fields are still covered with corn.
Farmers who planted soy said their neighbors were reluctant to switch crops.
The rule of thumb in Heilongjiang is that corn sells for half as much per ton as soybeans. But an acre of farmland planted with corn typically produces three times as much food. So farmers can earn more money from corn than from soybeans, even when the subsidies are factored in.
Heilongjiang, like most of rural China, has a severe labor shortage, as young people leave for cities. They earn soaring wages in the country’s factories, which are also short of labor but pay much more than farming.
“Corn is easy to grow because it’s less hassle — soybeans require more care and maintenance, and if they’re not managed properly, they’ll become weed-ridden,” said Jia Yinghai, a farmer in Dawusili, a village near Heihe.
During the first Trump administration, when Beijing briefly halted purchases of American soybeans, many people thought Russia could help China reduce its dependency on American imports.
Some Chinese businesses already operate soybean farms across the Amur River in Siberia. But their efforts to expand have run into trouble.
For one, the Chinese rail line that runs south from the Russian border at Heihe charges higher freight rates than China’s national system, said Zhou Rui, the general manager of the Heihe Beifeng Yuandong Agricultural Development Company, a Heihe enterprise with soybean farms in Russia. The company has soybean crushing mills in Heihe that squeeze out the soybean oil, used in cooking, and leave behind soybean meal, used as animal feed.
Trucks send Heihe Beifeng’s high-value soybean oil south. But the company has found it hard to persuade big chicken- and pig-rearing companies 1,500 miles away in central China to buy its soybean meal, said Mr. Zhou, who is not related to the farmer with the same family name.
To make matters worse, Russia changed its soybean policies after invading Ukraine in 2022. Russia introduced a tax of roughly 20 percent on exports of uncrushed soybeans. The tax discouraged farmers from sending their crops to China.
Russia’s rail system is also providing free shipment of soybean meal to livestock farms in western Russia, which supply meat to its soldiers at the front lines. That is another incentive for soybeans grown in Russia’s Siberia to be moved west, not south into China.
Last year, Russia’s soybean exports to China fell by half, and made up only 0.6 percent of China’s total soybean imports.
Overall, China sells three to four times more in goods to the United States than it buys, an imbalance that President Trump is trying to address. “I hope China will quickly quadruple its soybean orders,” he wrote on social media last month.
China may yet have another trump card as it jockeys with the United States over soybeans, however: strategic stockpiles of soybeans to use during war, agricultural disaster or other crises. While the precise size of the stockpiles is a state secret, the U.S. government recently estimated that Beijing may hold 45 million tons of soybeans, or two years’ worth of imports from the United States.
Less clear, however, is how much of that emergency reserve China is willing to tap for a trade war.
Li You contributed research.
Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic.
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