The United States' top export to China is soybeans.
However, with the U.S. and China engaged in a tariff war during most of 2025, soybean shipments plunged all the way to zero from June through October 2025. Following orders from the top of China's government, Chinese firms hadn't even bothered to place any orders to buy U.S. soybeans.
That changed on 30 October 2025. As part of the tariff war truce struck between the two nations, China's government negotiators agreed that Chinese state-controlled firms like Sinograin and COFCO would purchase 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans before the end of 2025. The agreement also specified China would buy 25 million metric tons of soybeans in each of the next three years.
China's purchases of 12 million metric tons worth of U.S. soybeans in 2025 was confirmed on 20 January 2026. But because China started placing orders so late, most of the crop they bought was nowhere close to where it could be quickly loaded on oceangoing ships to China. We suspect most of the soybeans bought by China in November and December 2025 were stored closer to where the crops are grown in the American Midwest. The following video shows how soybeans make their way to the Mississippi River, where they are loaded onto barges in the first stages of their export to other nations:
It takes time to transfer soybeans from siloes to trucks and then onto barges. It takes more time for the barges to sail down toward the port of New Orleans, where the soybeans are transferred from the barges to shipping containers and bulk cargo ships. It then takes even longer for the container-laden and bulk cargo ships to sail down to the Panama Canal and cross to the Pacific Ocean, where it then takes another few weeks to arrive at China's ports where they are unloaded.
In November 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau reports the U.S. exported just $21 million worth of soybeans to China. At that month's average spot price of $10.50 per bushel, that works out to be about 56,577 metric tons. In December 2025, the total value of soybeans exported from the U.S. to China jumped to $593.8 million, which at $10.40 per bushel, represents about 1.55 million metric tons of soybeans being shipped.
Altogether, U.S. export data has yet to account for roughly another 10.45 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans bought by China to be exported from the U.S. Assuming the same price of $10.40 per bushel as recorded for December 2025, that's about $4 billion worth of soybeans headed to China that hasn't yet been officially recorded in U.S. export data because it wasn't in place to depart from the U.S. before the end of the year.
As you can see in the following chart, the $593.8 million of soybean exports in December 2025 was enough to reverse a downtrend and start a small upward surge.
We anticipate that new surge will accelerate upward in January and February 2026 as the remaining 10.45 million metric tons of soybeans reaches their ports of exit and begins their long sea voyage to China. When it does, it will amp up U.S. GDP numbers for the first quarter of 2026, just as the absence of U.S. soybean exports in the fourth quarter of 2025 contributed to that quarter's lackluster recorded growth.
References
U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900). U.S. Trade in Goods with China, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Nominal Figures, Total Census Basis. [Online database]. Accessed 19 February 2026.