China’s Soybean Imports Set to Slip as Brazil Deepens Its Grip on Beijing’s Market
11 September 2026, Beijing, China: China’s soybean imports are forecast to fall to 108 million tonnes in the 2026/27 marketing year, down from 112.6 million tonnes the year before, according to a new report from the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service published on September 9, even as Brazil cements its position as Beijing’s dominant supplier at the expense of American farmers.
The USDA attaché report also trimmed China’s domestic soybean production outlook to 20.1 million tonnes for 2026/27, citing a contraction in the area planted domestically, reinforcing China’s continued reliance on imports to meet crush demand for animal feed and cooking oil in the world’s largest soybean-consuming market. The decline in the overall import forecast, however, points to softer growth in feed demand rather than a supply shortfall, since Chinese feed mills have been adjusting formulas to include a larger share of soybean meal relative to other protein sources, a shift that USDA expects to slow the pace of import growth going forward.
The bigger story in the report is the sourcing mix. By mid-August, China had secured 12.9 million tonnes of US soybeans against earlier purchase pledges, plus a further 5.7 million tonnes for delivery in the 2026/27 year, purchases that trace back to the Busan accord reached between Washington and Beijing in October 2025, which paused a set of tariffs as part of a broader commercial understanding. But those volumes have been dwarfed by the surge in South American supply. Brazil shipped more than 10 million tonnes of soybeans to China in each month from June through August 2026, an extraordinary pace even by the standards of a country that has spent the past decade steadily displacing the United States as China’s preferred supplier, while Argentina and Uruguay stepped in with additional cargoes as Brazilian export inventories tightened toward the end of that stretch.
Tariffs still shaping trade flows
A 10 percent Chinese retaliatory tariff on US soybeans, left in place even after the Busan accord eased some other duties, continues to push commercial buyers toward South American origin, according to the USDA report. State-owned Chinese enterprises have reportedly purchased an additional 3.8 million tonnes of US soybeans outside publicly disclosed commercial channels, a volume that suggests Beijing is willing to make targeted purchases to manage the diplomatic relationship even as private buyers favor cheaper, tariff-free Brazilian supply. The net effect is a soybean trade relationship that looks structurally different from a decade ago, when the United States supplied close to 40 percent of China’s soybean imports in a typical year. Brazil now accounts for the large majority of Chinese purchases in most months, and the current tariff structure gives Chinese importers little financial incentive to shift back toward American origin unless prices or currency movements make US beans meaningfully cheaper on a delivered basis.
For US soybean farmers, who depend on China for a large share of export demand, the report confirms a pattern that has weighed on the sector for much of 2026. American Farm Bureau Federation economist Faith Parum has noted that China has been diversifying its suppliers toward South America since 2022, and has cautioned that announced trade commitments do not always translate into sustained export growth for US farmers.
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