China imported no soybeans from the U.S. in September, the first time since November 2018 that shipments fell to zero, while South American shipments surged from a year earlier, as buyers shunned American cargoes during the ongoing trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
Soy is the primary ingredient of soy sauce.
The second being “sauce”
I love these stickers because I know he’s staring into the sun, like the damn moron he is.
It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
But Trump is funding Argentinian soybeans
And Argentina is selling their soybeans to China! The cirrrcle of liiiiife
A local Iowa farmer killed themself recently due to the current state of affairs. I emailed Chuck Grassley to let him know that his constituents have started committing suicide thanks to his choices and those of his admin, and that he has literally blood on his hands. It’s not even bad out there for farmers yet, but it’s about to be, and that fear has been enough for people to give up.
Well yeah, that’s the plan, so the private equity can buy up the land for cheap
JD Vance loves this one simple trick!
Genuine ask, it (feels like) more and more fields have been shifting to soybeans for more than a decade. Who else is a major importer that justified the swing from corn and feeder silage, before China got on board?
E:googled my questions- its a high protein alternative to meat, so it is popular in China, Mexico, and EU where mass meat farms are not on the same priority or scale as the US. Its also easily swapped into animal feed, and is a good energy yield crop that costs less soil-nutrients than most other high value crops as it produces much of its own Nitrogen to grow. In scale - In those 7 years China now imports about 20-25% of all US soybeans harvested accounting for over half of all soybeans exports. The US accounts for 30% of world soybean exports.
Most farms in the US are on 3 crop rotation and private farms often use a 5 year payback plan (for land and equipment). They JUST GOT DONE paying off the loans they took to get massively into Soy. They saw Trump promise farmers the world, took loans and grew Soy, got slapped with a recession, and just as they are recovering from poor sales, they get hit again. Given 1 in 5 farms are an export farm (the 20% statistic from earlier), and where they’re at in crop rotation, I would make a (wildly uneducated) guess that 1 in 3 farms will experience extreme hardship. Either they have savings to just eat the second recession hit and will remove any edge on “getting ahead”, or will need bailout, or will go broke. The other 2/3 are on a different rotation or are major corporate farms that will find a buyer within their own meat farms system to try and mitigate the massive excess.
You can’t grow corn every year. It depletes the soil of nutrients. We grow soy because 1) it restores soil nutrients 2) it is very easy to plant and harvest 3) it can grow almost anywhere in the US 4) we had a buyer which was china using it as animal feed.
I don’t know that there is another good cash crop we can use for crop rotation.
Think it depends where you live. Florida and many parts of Louisiana can get away with Sugarcane which should wipe the floor with corn on energy density per acre. If you get further north some areas can do sugar beets which also wipe the floor with energy per acre if people are trying to create the ethenol for vehicles and what not. Still have to rotate crops with something different though, I’m no expert but beans and edible small grains like those used for barley, hops, and what not may be able to not be a huge nitrogen sink. Maybe some carrots as well? Idk
So you can end up with 2x the ethenol per acre off sugar beets and keep bean costs lower in this country with no import costs. While also maybe providing local breweries or even large companies like Yuengling who still try to buy u.s. grown crops. Since Anheiser Busch was bought by inbev (Belgium?) I’m not sure where they get their products from.
US sugarcane is a protected market and is not globally competitive. US soy is globally competitive. You can’t just go produce sugarcane, because nobody outside of the US would buy it at the rates that US sugarcane farmers would sell it for.
https://harvardpolitics.com/politics-of-protectionism/
Perry points to the cost of sugar as an example of protectionism hurting the consumer. Around the world, the price of sugar is about 14 cents per pound; in the United States, the price of sugar is double that at 28 cents per pound. Perry explains that “because we keep most of the foreign sugar out of the country, the cost of higher sugar prices is spread around two or three hundred million consumers. We all pay a little bit more, every day, for anything that has sugar in it.”
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/candy-coated-cartel-time-kill-us-sugar-program
Barriers to imports of sugar have been employed nearly since the republic’s founding; a tariff on the product was first passed in 1789. Duties remained in place almost continuously save for a four-year period from 1890 to 1894, but modern-day sugar protectionism can be traced back to the 1934 passage of the Jones-Costigan Amendment.1 This legislation, passed as an emergency measure to provide assistance to sugar farmers and later incorporated into the Sugar Act of 1937, had as its key provisions domestic production quotas, subsidies, tariffs, and import quotas, all designed to restrict sugar supplies and boost prices.
As noted by the Yale Law Journal in 1938, the result of this market meddling was to harm consumers, while failing to serve as the industry savior the legislation’s backers imagined it to be:
Protection of the domestic beet and cane producers costs the American consumer three hundred million dollars a year even after the duties collected by the Treasury have been discounted. No attempt is made in the present scheme of regulation to encourage production in those fields which can produce sugar most economically and to discourage it in the fields which require subsidization. Thus, despite the inefficiency and expensiveness of the beet sugar industry and the well nigh intolerable working conditions in the beet fields, the latter area is the only one not really restricted by the quotas which have been imposed.
The most efficient producing areas have received the most drastic restrictions. A proration system has been devised which prohibits the State of Florida, the only area on the continent which could produce sugar profitably without a tariff or direct subsidy, from producing more than fifty percent of its own intrastate consumption. Moreover, the federal government has assisted in increasing the supply of sugar by spending enormous sums on research, irrigation, and reclamation during a period when production was already far outstripping consumption. As a consequence of these measures, legislation ostensibly enacted for the relief of domestic farmers results in a net loss to them.2
Despite such documented costs even at this early date, the system persisted with only minor adjustments through 1974, when a tripling in the price of sugar coincided with the expiration of the Sugar Act of 1948, and Congress decided against renewal. A decline in sugar prices then led to the temporary creation of price support loans, that is, government loans secured by sugar as collateral, which the borrower can either repay with interest or, if prices are too low, default on. These were enacted for the sugar crops of 1977–1979 and lapsed in 1980 and most of 1981 in the wake of a dramatic sugar price increase. A sugar support program reappeared in the 1981 Farm Bill following a price retreat.3
Officially known as the Agriculture and Food Act of 1981, the Farm Bill featured the reintroduction of price support loans that continue today and form one of the U.S. sugar program’s four key pillars. Extended through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Commodity Credit Corporation, these loans are made to sugar processors at an average national rate of 18.75 cents for every pound of raw sugarcane provided as collateral (rates vary slightly by region of the country) and 24.09 cents per pound of refined beet sugar.4 These rates effectively serve as a price target for the USDA.
Mia Wong of Cool Zone Media has been screaming this from her own mountains of madness since at least April 2nd. This is going to cause cascading impacts across the economy
We’re at war with a far right authoritarian government intent on destroying our way of life and conquering the entire world. The Chinese Communist Party has to be stopped at all costs. This is a small price to pay in order to bring an end to Xi’s Totalitarian Regime.
Google “Tiananmen Square” and then get back to me, if you don’t think this is serious.
Shhh and get back in mah underpants!
had me in the first part, the US is indeed far right and authoritarian. and must be stopped. 😉
You’re at war with two far-right authoritarian governments, and they BOTH want you to work yourself to death.
China will 100% win this war tho lol. They have all the resources, manufacturing capacity, etc. The US is a dead shell with no ability to self sustain without global trade.
China will 100% win this war tho lol.
I mean, more seriously, it’s not a war anyone can win. China’s insourcing a lot of their productive capacity, but not because they love the idea of jettisoning all the talented Western engineers and manufacturers. It’s because they can’t risk being sanctioned out of the supply chain on some asshole’s racist whims.
The US/China relationship was symbiotic. Ending it hurts us all.
The US is a dead shell with no ability to self sustain without global trade.
We continue to enjoy enormous professional, technical, and industrial capacities. But we’re cannibalizing them for short term profit.
It’s not anywhere close to gone, but it won’t last forever, either.
Yeah the conflict is not actually benificial to anyone except rich people (just like actual wars)
I’ll take “this fucker doesn’t know how anything works” for $200, Alex.
What do you think about Israel?
Totally cool. Russia too.
Don’t feel bad, but your takes don’t meet the minimum threshold for me to take you seriously.
It’s not the same person,so I think they’re mocking the person the question was originally for.
Removed by mod
For the first time in 7 years? Hmmm, would that make it Biden or Obama’s fault then?
Spin the wheel, donny. Let’s see who takes the blame this week on “IT!” “WASN’T!” “ME!”
This is a trick question. It was Hillary’s fault.
Nope it was Mustardgate and Tansuitgate
Too many buttery males
Sadiq Khan’s fault.
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2025/1015/soybean-farmers-trump-bailout-china
Mr. Trump has angered many farmers by providing economic aid for Argentina, which almost immediately responded by suspending its export taxes on soybeans and other goods. That allowed China to buy a large lot of Argentina’s soybeans at a discount, further undercutting U.S. soybean farmers. Farmer sentiment – a measure of how farmers view their financial future – fell last month, reversing all the gains it had made since Mr. Trump’s election last year, according to the Purdue University-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer Index.
When America’s soybean exports diminish, farmers in Brazil and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere expand their acreage and grow more soybeans for export, diminishing U.S. farmers’ market share. That’s what happened in Mr. Trump’s first trade war with China in 2018.
South American farmers are beginning to plant their soybean crop. If there’s no imminent sign of a U.S.-Chinese arrangement over soybeans, then they have more incentive to increase soybean acreage. That’s a long-term threat, Mr. Gerlt says, because once in cultivation, those acres don’t go away.
Farmers have mostly voted for Trump, so may they reap what they have sown.
farmers…reap what they have sown
Dammit. I wish I’d come up with that one.
Actually thinking about the idiom, I wonder if people used to complain a lot about the types or quality of vegetables they grew. It might be purely metaphorical, but I can definitely imagine it, having lived in a place where the owners didn’t box in their zucchini and I had to eat it twice a day for two months. I have a bunch of bomb zucchini recipes, including a self created prize winning quiche recipe (it’s just good homemade crust with an egg and no water, blind baked, then filled with zucchini rounds about 4mm thick sautéed with thin sliced red onions, balsamic vinegar, and rosemary, a little bit of good Parmesan and only two eggs in a 2:1 ratio with heavy cream- I don’t have it more precisely at hand rn), but I couldn’t enjoy it for a decade afterward.
“just”
I mean, it’s a nice dish that takes some effort, but it’s not molecular gastronomy or anything. I feel weird bragging about an award winning recipe that’s basically a standard zucchini quiche.
I also forgot to note the red onions, but I initially added the balsamic because I was too lazy to want to wait for them to caramelize on their own and figured a little bit of sweetness would approximate caramelization pretty well. Turns out, zucchini, balsamic, onion and Parmesan work well together.
But they keep getting bailed out, so no, they don’t learn.
Except for the soybeans. They likely won’t be reaped.
That’s what happened in Mr. Trump’s first trade war with China in 2018.
Whomp whomp.
How long before US starts to import soybeans?
I doubt it. We plant soy beans as part of crop rotation, but don’t actually consume them. We sold them primarily to china to use as feed for animals since china primarily uses its soy beans to feed its population. Due to the trade war, china is purchasing soy from other countries. This means every other year, farmers will not have income unless either the US consumes a lot more soybeans or all the farmers agree to use a different crop rotation that has value. But soy beans are easy to plant, do a great job enriching soil, and can grow in most climates in the us.
I think that one of the major alternative crops is corn.
kagis
Looks like it. Same sort of counties:
Soy production:
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/graphics/SB-PR-RGBChor.png
Corn production:
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/graphics/CR-PR-RGBChor.png
So might mean more corn production over time.
You can’t do corn every year. Corn farmers need to rotate and the primary crop is soy since it replenishes the nutrients corn needs and it is easy and you can sell it (or could)
Growing more corn doesn’t seem to be possible without also growing more soy.
How can we have a surplus of soy boys and soy beans at the same time?
And Argentina stepped in and sold their entire crop to China. All orchestrated by Trump.
This should mean lower prices on soy beans and related goods for people in US, correct? Supply and demand? I works doesn’t it?
Ever read Grapes of Wrath?
Well, yeah, but let’s say that you buy a truckload of soybeans. What do you plan to do with it?
You clearly never saw me in my “edamame everyday” phase.
I’m not actually sure that we could eat all of it. The problem is that (a) IIRC, it’s the largest US crop and (b) vegetables are a lot more efficient to produce than animals. If we convert it from animal to human feed, a ton of calories show up. I remember a statistic that if the US went vegetarian, it could single-handedly feed all of Europe just from the increased surplus without putting any more land into agricultural production just because of the higher efficiency.
China purchased about 45% of all U.S. soybean exports last year
https://sentientmedia.org/trumps-tariffs-are-hurting-soybean-farmers/
Of course, this also has a reciprocal effect on China, as it no longer has the 25 million metric tons of soybeans that it would otherwise have purchased from the United States.
https://usafacts.org/articles/us-agricultural-exports/
The US’s biggest food export is soybeans: they were 14.0% of all agricultural exports in 2024, with a market value of $24.6 billion. Around half of American soybeans ($12.85 billion worth) are exported to China.
https://vegnt.com/foods/1kg/soybeans_mature_seeds_raw.html
This says that 1kg of soybeans have 4460 calories, or enough to feed an adult male for about 2.2 days. So 25 million metric tons is 25,000,000 metric tons × 1000 kg/metric ton × 2.2 man-days = 55 billion man-days. There are about 347 million people in the US. Assuming that every one of them eats as much as an adult male, which is an unrealistically conservative estimate in favor of increased consumption, that’s equivalent to feeding all of them for 43% of a year on just the surplus would-have-gone-to-China-in-a-year soybeans here, before we even start eating anything else, like pizza and other stuff, like the soybeans that we’re already producing for domestic use.
EDIT: In fairness, my assumption is that some of this is gonna involve countries maybe selling soy production that they would have bought from, say, Brazil or whoever to China and picking up US production at a lower price than it would normally be available. Like, it’ll be a hit, but I don’t think that all of it will simply just sit there; Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand won’t be idle.
Process it into meat alternatives, and they’ll finally be cheaper than meat! Hell yeah!
Honestly, if this gets more people to eat more vegetarianly, it’ll be one of the few good things out of the Trump administration.
Lo— uh-oh…
Nice.
Trump has been the bully is whole life who everyone backs down from. He cannot imagine anyone fighting back. And if they do they’re cheating, scamming, being dishonest.
