The Americas are the world’s main soybean producing regions, with the United States, Brazil and Argentina the staple crop’s primary producers. China, as a major importer of soybeans, used to rely primarily on the U.S. for its imports.

This landscape is shifting, however. With a projection of 110 million tons for 2025, Brazilian soybean exports are on track to break the record set in 2023, fueled overwhelmingly by sustained Chinese demand.

China’s reliance on Brazilian soybeans is intensifying. It currently buys nearly 80 percent of Brazil’s exports, according to Brazilian statistics. Chinese customs data for the first eight months of the year confirm this trend, with Brazil supplying 71.6 percent of China’s 73.31-million-ton import volume. The U.S. share, meanwhile, fell to 22.8 percent, with imports halting completely after May.

This major shift in dynamics underscores the ongoing restructuring of the soybean trade landscape in the Americas. Amid U.S.-initiated trade frictions and rampant U.S. tariffs, China has proactively reduced its reliance on U.S. soybeans and instead strengthened cooperation with Brazil, demonstrating a strategy of de-risking the supply chain for the purpose of food security. This also reflects the loss of competitiveness of U.S. soybeans due to the country’s trade policies including tariffs. All in all, the focus of the soybean trade landscape in the Americas is shifting from North to South America.

This strategic shift is a direct market response to longstanding U.S. unilateral trade policies. Faced with this reality, Chinese buyers have turned to Brazil—a rational decision driven by price, supply chain stability and the trade environment. This realignment reflects both the commercial logic for Chinese firms and a natural rebalancing of global agricultural trade flows.

Despite the 2020 Phase One trade agreement between China and the U.S., American tariffs on Chinese products remain largely in place. Persistent trade frictions have raised costs for Chinese importers of U.S. soybeans, eroding their price advantage. Meanwhile, Brazil’s stable and cooperative trade relationship with China lowers policy uncertainty for businesses. With comparable quality, competitive pricing and expanding production capacity, Brazilian soybeans have emerged as a more secure and economically rational source for Chinese buyers, mitigating supply chain risks.

The U.S., oriented by its America First policy, neglects the interdependence among countries in the context of globalization and attempts to maximize its own interests through measures such as unilateral tariffs and maximum pressure. This will ultimately undermine the competitiveness of its own key industries. The policy uncertainty brought about by U.S. unilateralism has reduced the willingness of Chinese companies to sign long-term contracts with U.S. suppliers this year.

U.S. policies have failed to achieve the goal of protecting the country’s soybean industry and instead plunged it into a vicious cycle of “sluggish sales to plummeting prices to reduced income to industry?contraction.”

The U.S. soybean dilemma highlights a harsh truth in global trade: Unilateralism and tariff wars are counterproductive. By continuing to favor coercion over cooperation, the United States may find itself increasingly alone in the global marketplace.