Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on social media on Wednesday that he and Trump spoke at length with Argentina president Javier Milei about plants to financially support Argentina to assist in its stabilization. The Treasury is negotiating with Argentina for a $20 billion swap line with Argentina’s central bank, Bessent said on X.com. As part of its effort to increase the flow of capital, Argentina also suspended its export taxes this week, including on soybeans.
Amid the negotiations with the U.S., Argentina reportedly strengthened its trade partnership with China, whch ordered at least 10 cargoes of soybeans from the South American country, according to Reuters, which cited multiple traders.
The moves have dealt a blow to soybean farmers in the U.S., who are strongly dependent on exports to China, and have continued to be priced out of the global market due to tariffs hiking the cost of their crop in the midst of its busy harvest season.
“The frustration is overwhelming,” the American Soybean Association (ASA) President Caleb Ragland said in a statement on Wednesday. “U.S. soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the U.S. government is extending $200 billion in economic support to Argentina while that country drops its soybean export taxes to sell 20 shiploads of Argentine soybeans to China in just two days.”
“The farm economy is suffering while our competitors supplant the United States in the biggest soybean import market in the world,” it concluded.
Soybeans accounted for nearly 20% of the U.S.’s cash crop receipts in 2024, raking in $46.8 billion, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. About one quarter of all soybean exports from the U.S. go to China, but retaliatory tariffs from China as a result of the ongoing trade war—which have reached 34%—have hobbled U.S. farmers, while South American countries like Brazil and Argentina have racked up market share. As of 2024, Brazil made up 71% of the Chinese soybean imports, according to the ASA, up from 2% three decades ago.
For the farmers, the changing market share dynamics isn’t personal, it’s just business, according to Ryan Loy, assistant professor and extension economist for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.
“There’s a lot of politics involved, but at the end of the day, it’s a function of who is cheaper on the market,” Loy told Fortune.
Economic impact on rural America
This market squeeze has an outsized impact on rural communities, where farming can make up 20% of a county’s employment. As global demand for U.S. soybeans waver, so, too, do profits for farmers.
In parts of the Midwest like North and South Dakota and Minnesota, the majority of soybeans get routed to ports in the Pacific Northwest to be shipped overseas. But with fewer shipments of soybeans being exported, supply is piling up, driving down the cost of soybeans. Since its 2022 peak, soybean prices have fallen about 40%.
While some soybeans can go to crushing facilities to be repurposed as oil or used in ethanol, many soybean farms aren’t located near plants able to process and use the crop domestically, Kyle Jore, an economist and farmer in Thief River Falls in northwest Minnesota and secretary of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association, said even if a trade with with China were to be made today, transportation bookings to take the crop out of state are full because of the busy corn harvest.
“We’re probably just going to plan to sit on the soybeans and wait,” Jore said.
Many farmers trying to cut their losses will sell their soybeans to agricultural co-ops who will buy the crops, but at a much lower price than market rate.
“In the meantime, though, the producers that sell are taking large losses,” Jore said. “And they’re going to have to feel those losses.”
Extension economist Loy warned of the “ripple effects” of strained farmers on rural America.
“If farms in those rural communities aren’t successful, if they face financial hardships, then those rural communities also suffer, too,” Loy said. “All of these rural communities rely on agriculture to some degree. In its most extreme, if farms close up and businesses no longer have the customers there—or at least the customers don’t have the money to support them—businesses close and people move out.”
Aftershocks from the 2018 trade war
Jore called this feeling of concern for the wellbeing of the agricultural economy “deja vu.”
During Trump’s first administration, U.S. farmers lost $27 billion in agricultural exports between mid-2018 and 2019 as a result of a trade war with China, according to a 2022 report from the USDA. During that same period, the U.S. market share of Chinese soybean imports plummeted to a 30-year low of 19%, the ASA reported. Brazil’s market share reached its peach of 75%. Years later, U.S. soybean farmers have yet to fully recover, Todd Main, the director of market development at the Illinois Soybean Association, told Fortune.
“The takeaway that we have from the data of the last time we did this is that the U.S. lost about 20% of our market share, and it never came back,” Main said.
While some soybean producers have been able to make up revenues through different export markets like the European Union (which generates only $2.45 billion in U.S. export revenues compared to China’s $12.64 billion, per the USDA), the big difference between Trump’s first trade war versus this one is the price of tools and equipment—in part due to the steep tariffs. according to August data from the North Dakota State University Agricultural Trade Monitor, self-propelled machines like tractors have been hit with a more than 15% tariff rate. Tariffs on herbicides and some pesticides have propelled prices up 25%, partially because of trade disputes with Canada.
“Even though in 2018 we were seeing similar revenues, this time around, we have significantly higher [input], so our margins are much more negative,” Jore said.
What comes next?
Soybean producers have gotten creative to try to build a profitable infrastructure outside of exports to China. The Illinois Soybean Association created the Soy Innovation Center to develop sustainable uses for processed soy, such as oil, that can be used domestically.
The White House, for its part, has floated developing an agricultural subsidy program using revenue from tariffs, according to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. The first Trump administration provided farmers with a $28 billion bailout. But while the aid was able to nearly completely replace lost revenues, making up for lost global market share is a slower—and not guaranteed—recovery. A similar bailout today would yield similar results, Wendong Zhang, an associate professor of applied economics and policy at Cornell University’s SC Johnson School of Business, told Fortune.
“It will compensate for the immediate economic losses due to tariffs, but it doesn’t necessarily improve the long-term competitiveness of agriculture on the global stage,” Zhang said.
Farmers aren’t banking on a bailout, either. They’re looking for a trade deal—or at least stable enough ground to grow their businesses, Illinois Soybean Association’s Main said.
“We can grow anything. What we really want is good relations with our trading partners,” he said. “We want markets. We don’t want bailouts.”
Politics8 years ago