You can’t get much further from China than Jason Maxwell’s farm in Morgan County, Indiana.
Maxwell grows soybeans and corn – about 50-50. He built a house here for his son who’s the fifth generation to work this land.
“It should be kind of flattering that farmers be in the middle of geopolitical, economic dealings within the world. And it also shows the importance of our product,” Maxwell said.
He’s almost done with the harvest, and China isn’t buying. It’s the world’s largest soy buyer, accounting for two thirds of global imports.
But because of retaliatory tariffs, US soybeans face a 20 percent higher duty than other exporters. That’s driving prices way down.
China imported $12.8 billion worth of soybeans in 2024. It stopped purchasing American soybeans in January.
“At night you're sitting there in the quietness, and you start thinking about do you have enough money for your input for the next year?” Maxwell said.
The trade war with China started heating up in the spring, but chief economist for the Indiana Farm Bureau Todd Davis said it’s just starting to hit farmers.
“Now at our harvest, we should be exporting to China,” he said. “Because of lower prices, we should be more competitive in the global markets, but China has not purchased anything from us to date.”
Trump is promising a bailout for American farmers with $13 billion in tariff revenue – not just for soybeans, but other exports as well. That will help in the short run, but Maxwell said farmers have next year to worry about.
“I would rather them take that and either pay down the debt or try to help farmers with more products to be made out of corn and soy,” he said.
The government shutdown could delay those checks. It also stopped USDA bean counters’ weekly reports on crop yields. Traders and importers are essentially flying blind.
“You have to rely on just anecdotal information that you get from trade media,” Davis said.
The shutdown isn’t the only reason timing is bad. The past few years have seen rising input costs and declining crop yields.
“This is looking like the third consecutive year of losses, and so any sort of aid that is provided is more of a temporary band aid to help get us into the next year,” Davis said.
In the short term, tariffs drive down soybean prices and force farmers to operate at a loss. In the long run, they could damage farmers’ relationships with Chinese buyers.
China also buys heavily from Brazil and Argentina, whose output has skyrocketed in the seven years since Trump’s last trade war. Professor of Agricultural Economics Michael Langemeier at Purdue University said Brazil has increased its soybean production every year for the last two decades.
“It’s not like China can necessarily get all their soybeans from Brazil, but they could get a very large share of their soybeans from Brazil, because Brazil now has over 40 percent market share in world soybeans,” he said.
Soybean farmers were irked when Trump announced a $20 billion bailout of the government of Argentina, which had just announced a temporary suspension on its soybean export tax. He doubled that to $40 billion last Thursday.
Chinese importers aren’t only establishing new relationships with South America. They say America is no longer seen as a dependable trading partner.
Many Indiana farmers have confidence Trump’s trade policies will benefit them in the long run. But the industry is pressuring him to lower tariffs in time to save this year’s crop.
Maxwell thinks the reducing farmers’ reliance on China is overdue.
“It's just the suffering right now with us,” Maxwell said. “It's something we probably should have done a long time ago, and we didn't. And the world got to where it is now and we're trying to play catch up.”
The American Soybean Association sent Trump a letter in August, urging him to reach a deal with China. The American Farm Bureau board met with Trump’s Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Washington DC this month to discuss their concerns.
The president said on his social media platform Truth Social in October “it will all be fine” with China but threatened a 155 percent tariff on Chinese goods last Monday.
Some farmers are hedging their bets, planting corn rather than soybeans. But that’s no guarantee for profit either. Americans have grown more corn than any year since 1936, flooding the market.
“It's not only the soybean prices are not doing very well,” Langemeier said. “The corn prices are relatively low, and that's probably also impacted wheat prices.”
But when the beans get cheap enough, someone will buy. Soybeans can be converted to vegetable oil, animal feed and biodiesel fuel. By the end of the harvest, Maxwell will be selling to Bunge Global – at whatever price the company is willing to pay.
“If the economy's bad for the farm, it's bad at home,” Maxwell said. “You can't work any harder. There's nothing you can do about it. Farmers are kind of at the mercy of weather and politicians that don't even know how to run a combine.”
