"China Halts Purchases for Negotiation Reasons...
U.S. Farmers Suffer"
U.S. President Donald Trump reaffirmed on October 1 (local time) that he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in four weeks. He announced plans for a U.S.-China summit to coincide with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting to be held in Gyeongju, South Korea, later this month. He also stated that China’s purchase of U.S. soybeans will be a major agenda item.
On his own social networking service, Truth Social, President Trump said, “I will meet President Xi in four weeks,” adding, “Soybeans will be a major topic of discussion at that meeting. Let’s make soybeans and other crops great again!”
He had previously stated last month that he had agreed to meet President Xi at the APEC summit in South Korea, and with this latest comment, plans for a U.S.-China summit have been reaffirmed. The two leaders’ face-to-face meeting will be the first in six years since the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Osaka, Japan, in June 2019.
President Trump said, “China has stopped purchasing simply for the sake of ‘negotiation,’ causing harm to our country’s soybean farmers. We have made a lot of money from tariffs, and part of that will be used to help our farmers.” He continued, “I will never let our farmers down,” and criticized, “Sleepy Joe Biden did not enforce the agreement that required China to purchase billions of dollars’ worth of our agricultural products, especially soybeans.”
The agreement he referred to is the “Phase One U.S.-China Trade Deal” signed in January 2020 during his first term. At that time, China had pledged to purchase large quantities of U.S. agricultural products, but the agreement was not implemented after the Biden administration took office in 2021.
President Trump added, “Everything will work out well.”
Currently, U.S. soybean farmers are in the fall harvest season, but they have been hit hard as China, which accounts for half of U.S. soybean exports, has suspended imports of American soybeans. This is seen as a strategy by China to increase its bargaining power with the U.S. ahead of the expiration of the U.S.-China tariff suspension on November 10.
The Financial Times (FT) recently reported that, unlike last year when China contracted to import 6.5 million tons of U.S. soybeans around this time, there have been no purchases or shipments so far this year. Instead, China has significantly increased its soybean imports from South American countries such as Brazil.
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