Soybean futures touched more than $11 a bushel Thursday, the most in more than a year, on optimism President Donald Trump's deal with China to buy at least 25 million tons of U.S. soybeans annually for the next three years will hold up.
Futures in Chicago have swung from gains to losses this week amid uncertainty over whether Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping would benefit U.S. soybean growers, who have been increasingly nervous about future demand as their biggest customer, China, stopped buying soybeans for months in favor of Brazil.
As of Thursday afternoon, China still had not released details of what it considered to be in the agreement. But U.S. Treasury Scott Bessent said on Thursday that a new U.S.-China agreement calls for Beijing to continue buying soybeans near similar volumes to recent years.
“It’s a positive, I’m not going to say it’s wildly bullish but it’s positive, and maybe we see a few more bean acres in 2026," Matt Bennett, CEO and co-founder of AgMarket.Net, told Agri-Pulse.
Big details, though, still need to be answered. Bessent told Fox Business that the deal includes China committing to buy at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans this year, though he didn't clarify if that means between now and December or the marketing year ending Aug. 31, 2026. There are also questions around what other ag commodities are part of the agreement.
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the 12 million tons are to be bought during the current "growing season," without elaborating. It also includes commitments for China to buy U.S. sorghum and hardwood, the official said.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins confirmed in a post to X that China would buy sorghum and wood under the deal, and lower duties on a slate of commodities, including soybeans, cotton, sorghum, corn, wheat, chicken, dairy, pork, beef, fruits and vegetables.
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Bennett, also a seventh-generation Illinois producer of soybeans, corn and livestock, said some traders were concerned China might not buy any soybeans in the current ag marketing year.
“If there’s an assurance for three years, that’s literally 12 million more than a lot of people thought we might see," he said. "So in my opinion, it’s friendly, especially longer term because we know they will come in and buy. I’m hesitant to get too excited, but if that’s really the deal that’s sign a good thing versus what we all thought was going on.”
Soybean futures in Chicago as of late morning Thursday had exceeded the psychologically significant $11 a bushel, rising to the highest since July 2024, according to Scott Gerlt, chief economist of the American Soybean Association.
Gerlt noted that China buying 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans for the next several years would be in line with the past couple of marketing years, yet below 2020/21 through 2022/23 that exceeded 30 million metric tons.
The drop off occurred as China eventually failed to live up to its pledges under the Phase One Agreement, a trade pact inked in 2020 after months of talks during the last year of Trump's first term. How a new deal will be enforced is among the top questions from farmers and ag analysts and traders.
"This is the fifth meeting between China and the U.S. over trade and we’ve always come away from them like ‘well, we have a framework, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve fully crossed the bridge,'" Stephen Nicholson, global sector strategist for grains and oilseeds at Rabobank, told Agri-Pulse. "I hope they keep talking and I hope also we get some solid numbers and some solid details as to what has been agreed to and then what happens next.”
Oliver Ward contributed to this report.
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