For the past two decades, China has been the main customer for U.S. soybeans, purchasing between half and two thirds of soybean exports. But beginning in late May 2025, China halted purchases in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, a situation that some American farmers warned they could not survive. Following recent trade talks, Trump told reporters that China has agreed to resume buying “tremendous amounts” of soybeans from the United States. The threat of an immediate “farmageddeon,” it would seem, has abated.
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But history shows that even short-term disruptions in commodity flows can have lasting consequences. What’s at stake reaches far beyond the American heartland—the volatility introduced into U.S.-China relations by recent trade disputes undermines a mutually beneficial economic arrangement that took decades to build and will permanently reshape global agricultural markets.
After World War II, production of soybeans took off in the United States. The plant—largely unknown in the Western Hemisphere a generation earlier—enjoyed sudden popularity as a source of protein for feeding hogs and chickens grown in the proliferating confinement operations that gave Americans an abundance of cheap meat. Soybeans quickly surpassed all crops in acreage except for corn and wheat.
This explosive growth created a new challenge: finding buyers for ever-larger harvests. The American Soybean Association (ASA) and the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service first expanded exports to Europe and Japan. But economic pressures on American farmers intensified. Amid escalating interest rates, collapsing land values, and tanking commodity prices, not to mention growing competition from Brazil and Argentina, the development of additional markets became critical.
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China was a particularly enticing target. U.S. policymakers had long regarded the country as a vast and virtually untapped commercial frontier. Although foreign trade with China was severely constrained following the 1949 communist victory in the country’s civil war, interest revived in the 1970s as Sino-American relations thawed and Chinese leaders began liberalizing the economy. Meanwhile, urbanization and income growth drove increased consumption of meat and cooking oil.
Observing these trends, the ASA established a Beijing office in 1982 to coordinate market development activities. Rather than promoting soy for traditional foods like tofu or soy sauce, early efforts focused on educating livestock feeders to capitalize on growing demand for meat. At the time, farmers raised only a few pigs each and fed their animals primarily with household scraps. To seed future demand for soybeans, the ASA brought U.S. experts to demonstrate methods for feeding livestock that instead used a ration of corn and soybean meal. The initiative soon expanded to chickens grown for meat and eggs, and to farmed fish.
As China continued to open its economy and buyers tested imports of soybeans, the American soybean industry initiated a second phase of market development that emphasized people-to-people relationship building across borders. Groups like the ASA, the United Soybean Board, the United States Soybean Export Council, and state-level organizations coordinated exchanges that connected U.S. farmers with Chinese buyers and other industry experts.
Market study tours sent farmers to China to learn about agricultural practices and importer needs; American farmers, in turn, hosted envoys of Chinese traders and officials in their homes and fields. During these visits, farmers demonstrated the technologies they used to grow soybeans, showcased the quality of the resulting produce, and shared laughs with their guests while shucking sweet corn together and enjoying barbecues. This friendly atmosphere celebrated the mutual benefits of global trade and solidified relationships through which sizeable business transactions were executed.
Sino-American soybean diplomacy underwrote surprisingly seismic shifts for both economies. For decades, soybeans became China’s leading import from the United States. Used primarily to feed livestock, the beans facilitated an enormous increase in per capita animal protein consumption, which quadrupled from less than 10kg in the 1970s to 66kg by 2014. In this way, imported soybeans assured China’s food security.
For the United States, this relationship further cemented the soybean’s dominant position in agriculture and drove production to unprecedented heights. In many years, this unassuming legume has ranked among the nation’s top ten most valuable exports, worth tens of billions of dollars annually.
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The current trade dispute erodes this carefully built foundation and risks triggering long-term, costly reconfigurations of commodity flows. Even brief supply shocks can spawn unpredictable and lasting outcomes. It has happened before. In the 1970s, an El Niño weather event caused a crash of the Peruvian anchovy harvest, another important source of animal feed. Soybean prices spiked, threatening to drive up grocery bills for American consumers. President Richard Nixon, already fighting inflation and preoccupied by congressional investigations surrounding Watergate, made the rash decision to embargo soybean exports in June 1973. The embargo suddenly severed Japan, then the United States’ largest customer for soybeans, from 90% of its total supply.
Although the embargo lasted less than four months, the damage had been done. Japan, wary of continued reliance on the United States as a trading partner, invested heavily in developing an alternative source of soybeans in Brazil. Today, Brazilian soybean output has surpassed that of the United States and is the main source of competition for American soybean farmers.
China is similarly pursuing alternatives. Chinese companies are investing in Brazilian ports to increase their export capacity, and the government has launched new trials on previously banned GMO soybeans with an eye toward expanding domestic production.
It remains to be seen if China will fulfill its import pledge—China already fell short on promises made during the first Trump Administration to purchase American farm products. Meanwhile, American farmers are being squeezed at both ends by low commodity prices for their crops and skyrocketing costs from tariffs on imported fertilizers and machinery. And although the American soybean industry is working to diversify its customer base, challenges remain. For one, the enormous Chinese market—accessed only through decades of strategic engagement—will not be swiftly or easily replaced. At a more fundamental level, Trump’s mercurial approach to trade has tarnished perceptions of the United States as a steady participant in the global economy. This undermines opportunities for building and maintaining the relationships that are key to durable economic prosperity, connections that can take decades to forge but that can be dismantled far more quickly.
Dr. Rachel Steely is a historian of the political economy of commodity frontiers. She is currently writing a bookon the rise of soy as a global commodity.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
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