China halted U.S. soybean, corn imports before tariff war: report

China has stopped purchasing soybean and corn from the United States since mid-January, Nikkei Asia reported, citing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Although no longer China’s biggest soybean supplier, the U.S. sent about half of its soybean exports to the world’s second most populous country last year. In 2024, China imported more than 27 million tonnes of soybeans from the U.S., worth $12.8 billion, according to the USDA.

Nikkei cited officials from the Brazilian Soybean Producers Association as saying that China signed contracts for 2.4 million tonnes of Brazilian soybeans earlier this month, which is “an unusually large contract that corresponds to one-third of what China typically consumes in a month.”

In a recent interview with CGTN, U.S. Soybean Export Council CEO Jim Sutter said, “China is a market that we don’t want to lose.”

Tags: China, exports, corn, Brazil, United States, soybeans, Market