There is much discussion these days about China not buying any US soybeans so far this marketing year. This is decidely not the norm. For example, by this time last year China had booked over 400 million bushels of soybean imports from the US. The big question that everyone is wrestling with in the grain markets is what happens if China continues its embargo on US imports of soybeans for the entire 2025/26 marketing year. I will use the September WASDE estimates (the most recent available) to consider how global soybean trade could be reshuffled to address this situation.
Let’s start with WASDE estimates for global soybean trade for 2025/26 (MMT = million metric tons):
Global soybean imports 186.21 MMT
China 112.00 MMT
Non-China 74.21 MMT
This shows that China’s soybean imports are projected to be about 60% of global trade. Talk about an 800 pound gorilla! But notice that non-China imports are projected to be 74.21 MMT, or 2.73 billion bushels. Despite China’s dominance of the global soybean trade, other countries are buying a whole bunch of soybeans.
Now, let’s assume that China sources all of its soybean import needs for 2025/26 from South American countries. The WASDE estimate of exportable surpluses from these countries is as follows:
Argentina 6 MMT
Brazil 112 MMT
Paraguay 7.7 MMT
Total = 125.7 MMT
and,
SA Exports 125.7 MMT
China soybean imports – 112 MMT
Difference = 13.7 MMT
So, if South America sources all of China’s 25/26 imports, they would have enough to do that and have 13.7 MMT left over to supply other importers. Not much, but still a positive amount.
Now, the question is how much of the non-China 74.21 MMT soybean imports the US will capture in 25/26. Here are my calculations:
Non-China imports 74.21 MMT
SA Non-China exports -13.7 MMT
Other exporters -16.22 MMT
US non-China exports = 44.29 MMT
(I derived other exporters (non US, Non SA) as total foreign exports of 141.92 – SA exports of 125.7 = 16.22 MMT.)
So my worst-case scenario for US soybean exports in 2025/26 is 44.29 MMT or 1,627 million bushels. The Sep WASDE estimate for US soybean exports was 1,685, quite close to my simple back of the envelope estimate. This exercise implies that the loss of China to US soybean exports is certainly a kick in the pants to US soybean producers, but it is not the complete disaster that headlines may make it seem. There is substantial scope for the global trade in soybeans to be “reshuffled” between importers and exporters.
A big potential caveat to this analysis is the level of China’s soybean imports for 2025/26. The USDA is projecting a 5.5 MMT increase for 2025/26. If this is too optimistic, the difference will flow all the way through the above computations and result in a decrease in U.S. soybean exports. More specifically, if China’s soybean imports revert to 2024/25 levels, this would shave another 200 million bushels off of U.S. soybean exports for 2025/26. That would definitely leave a mark.
Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign