US farmers 'cautiously optimistic' on China trade

Americans miss pie

The reality is that China's overall farm imports have been growing steadily over the past nine years — from $125 billion in 2017 to $207 billion in 2025, with a peak of $234.8 billion in 2022, primarily due to prices.

In the same period, however, US farm exports to China have been going through ups and downs, but producers have largely missed out on the growth in China's farm imports.

The Beijing summit could produce positive outcomes for US farmers. If China ends up purchasing $17 billion of US farm goods annually, plus 25 MMT of soybeans as the White House announced, it would take the volume of US exports to China to about $28 billion to $30 billion a year.

However, that number barely matches the volume preceding the 2025 "Liberation Day" announcement of US tariffs, and is much lower than the $41 billion peak achieved in 2022.

The structural shift caused by Trump's tariff policy has US citizens worried about the prospects for long-term farm trade with China.

"If you look out a decade or so, we know that long-term China is not going to be the dominant buyer that it once was," said Main, director of market development at the Illinois Soybean Association. "And so, we have to pivot."

Kenneth Quinn, president emeritus of the World Food Prize Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa, is more optimistic.

"In my opinion, the reference to a new 'constructive strategic stability' with 'moderate cooperation' and 'manageable differences' can provide an extended period of predictable situations, which Midwest farmers strongly desire," Quinn told China Daily.

The takeaway from the May summit is that it allows US farmers to make decisions before planting time, based on a clear understanding of the costs involved throughout the growing cycle, he said. "After a year of widely fluctuating tariff levels, having stable costs of the main ingredients involved in producing a crop will be a most welcome tranquil period for farmers in the American heartland," Quinn said.

The prospects for US-China farm trade largely hinge on big-picture bilateral relations.

Quinn said that one measure of the summit's impact will be whether China stays on the US Secretary of Commerce's List of Adversaries along with Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Cuba and Russia.

"If China is not removed from that list … it may be difficult to expect to see large increases in purchases of US agricultural commodities or other significant business deals," he said.

The most important thing is for the US State Department and China's Foreign Ministry to work on the goals and possible outcomes for any follow-up state visit of President Xi Jinping to the US. During the summit in Beijing, Trump invited Xi to visit the US later this year.

Quinn said a presidential summit provides an opportunity to answer a "fundamental question" in the US-China relationship by announcing a partnership to address the "greatest challenge humanity has ever encountered".

"Can we sustainably feed the 9.5 billion to 10 billion people who will be on our planet by 2050?" he said.

There may not be a time in the coming decades when the leaders of the US and China are both positioned to take dramatic steps to achieve that, Quinn said.

"My hope is that President Xi and President Trump will seize this opportunity and strive to achieve historic greatness by taking the first steps toward building peace through agriculture," he said.