Is China Still a Top U.S. Ag Customer?

For many years, China has had a food problem. It’s not easy feeding about 20% of the world’s population -- about 1.4 billion people -- using only 9% of the world’s arable land.

As China’s middle class grew, the country could not fully meet the demand for more diverse foods. So, for many years, China depended on the U.S. for many of its agricultural needs. However, trade between the U.S. and China has declined, and the long-term outlook for the relationship is challenged.

Trade between China and the United States

Five years ago, China was the largest buyer of U.S. ag products. In 2025, it didn’t make the top five.

The decline goes beyond the recent trade war, according to Dr. Sam Gregg, President and Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research.

“One of the reasons it's in a period of decline has nothing to do with tariffs,” Gregg said. “It has everything to do with American businesses finding it less and less beneficial to engage in trade with China.”

Gregg said changes in Chinese domestic policy increasingly favored Chinese companies while creating a flawed legal and regulatory environment for foreign businesses. He argued China’s industrial policy was distorting its economy and made trade less beneficial for U.S. companies.

The policy changes were a part of its geopolitical positioning, according to Bob Lighthizer, a former U.S. trade representative. “I don't trust China, at all, on anything. China does not like us. They don't want to like us,” he said.

Rising power, changing policy

Trade with China started to take off in the 1990s, according to Gregg, because policymakers believed free trade reduced conflict and war. For the sake of national security, U.S. trade policy brought China into the global market.

Additionally, when its market was opened, the United States benefited from a larger market and Chinese goods.

But it's also true that China has taken, since 2012, a very different economic approach,” Gregg said. “The state is taking a much bigger role in the Chinese economy. That's when you see trade starting to decline between the United States and China.”

The Chinese Communist Party took an aggressive approach to economic and foreign policy, according to Gregg. It did not want to be fully dependent on the U.S. for agriculture.

Over the years, it has supported countries like Brazil as an alternative supplier. When the trade war began, U.S. agriculture was a soft target for retaliatory tariffs. China could go to Brazil, but the U.S. didn’t have as many alternative destinations. 

RELATED: USDA Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Vaden told American Farmland Owner in late 2025 that Americans needed to pay more attention to Brazil. Here’s why. 

Lighthizer said, “China, for perfectly valid reasons, doesn't want to be dependent on imports. And China has other reasons to favor Brazil, right, that are kind of geopolitical reasons.” 

An important destination for farm products

China has been reducing its dependence on U.S. farm products like soybeans for more than a decade. In 2010, the market was relatively split, according to the American Farm Bureau.

China bought 45% of its soybeans from the U.S., versus Brazil’s 32% share. By 2024, Brazil had jumped to a 70% share. Still, the 23% of soybeans it bought from the U.S. represented a little under half of all U.S. ag exports to China.

The U.S. beef industry depends heavily on Chinese buyers. Variety meats sell at a premium in China and add value to each animal, according to Erin Borror, the vice president of economic analysis for the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

“Realize how absolutely reliant we are on China, for better or worse,” she said. “To take products in, which no other country or destination can take, in the volume and the value that China will take.”

Lighthizer thought farm exports are worth maintaining, but producers should take off the rose-colored glasses. “Soybeans, you know, are a general matter of worry. Soybeans worry me. There's too damn many of them. And China's buying most of them. That's a bad combination,” he said.

Borror said there’s still a lot of work to do. The Chinese market offers many opportunities, but she raised concerns over enforcing existing trade agreements. As an example, the Phase One trade agreement gave the U.S. beef industry some advantages over Brazilian producers, at least on paper.

“We have many unique advantages in that China market that China does not love,” Borror said. “But they have not been holding up their side of the agreement.”

Less of a Preferred Destination

Gregg argued China’s economic influence would weaken over the long term. “Its one-child policy has destroyed what was China's biggest competitive advantage, which was cheap labor. Massive corruption, massive cronyism. And because the state is coming more and more back into the Chinese economy, that makes the Chinese economy less competitive, less efficient, and I think in the long term, less influential,” he said.

Beyond trade wars or tariffs, Gregg said China has become less of a preferred destination because of policy decisions the Chinese government made. Ultimately, he believed the trade outlook was poor.

China is a good market in the short run, said Lighthizer. At least, while the U.S. has enough leverage to enforce trade agreements and buying commitments. 

“My advice is take advantage, sell, do what you can,” Lighthizer said. “But realize that long range, you're going to have to figure out an alternative.”

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