China to Buy $17 Billion in US Farm Goods Annually

Politico’s Ari Hawkins reported that “China will purchase at least $17 billion in U.S. agricultural products annually through 2028, in addition to soybean commitments already agreed to, the White House said in a fact sheet released Sunday.”

“The announcement followed President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing last week for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and was among the few concrete deliverables from a summit Trump had pitched in March as a ‘monumental event,'” Hawkins reported. “The White House also said China has renewed expired registrations for more than 400 U.S. beef facilities and added new listings, while working with U.S. regulators to lift suspensions on the remaining plants, a move aimed at widening market access for American farmers. And they said China has resumed poultry imports from U.S. states that the U.S. Department of Agriculture determined are free of avian influenza.”

“The new agricultural purchases would add to soybean commitments reached after Trump and Xi struck a broader trade truce negotiated during their October 2025 summit in Busan, South Korea,” Hawkins reported. “As part of that agreement, China committed to purchase 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans annually through 2028 while both countries paused a wider tariff escalation.”

Agri-Pulse’s Oliver Ward reported that “in an interview with CBS on Sunday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the ($17 billion) purchase commitments are for ‘aggregate’ agricultural products, and could include additional soybean buys, but also other commodities.

“‘When I say aggregate, I mean everything else. That could be soybeans, that could be beef, that could be grains, that could be dairy products, all kinds of things,’ he said,” according to Ward’s reporting. “But he stressed that these commitments are ‘on top of’ Beijing’s October soybean commitments.”

New Ag Buys Would Bring Total Exports to China Close to $30 Billion Annually

Reuters’ Ella Cao and Naveen Thukral reported that “the $17-billion pledge, in addition to existing commitments on soybeans, would take China’s total U.S. farm imports close to $28 billion to $30 billion a year, traders and analysts said, below a peak of $38 billion in 2022 but sharply above last year’s figure of $8 billion and $24 billion in 2024.”

“To meet that target, Beijing would have to sharply increase purchases of wheat, feed grains, meat and non-food agricultural goods such as cotton and timber, traders and analysts said,” according to Cao and Thukral’s reporting.

“Higher purchases of ⁠U.S. farm goods are likely to come at the expense of exports from rival suppliers such as Brazil, Australia and Canada,” Cao and Thukral reported. “‘Achieving $17 billion annually excluding soybeans would likely require China to intentionally redirect purchasing away ​from existing suppliers toward the United States for political and strategic reasons rather than purely commercial reasons,’ said Cheang Kang Wei, vice president at StoneX in Singapore. …Other major suppliers, including Canada and France for wheat, and ​Argentina for sorghum, could also see lower demand.”

US and China to Establish Boards of Trade and Investment

The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Cheng reported that “China said Saturday that it had agreed with the U.S. to establish bilateral boards of trade and investment, fulfilling one expected outcome of President Trump’s visit to Beijing and solidifying a commercial truce between the world’s two largest economies.”

“A U.S.-China Board of Trade would be used to discuss tariff reduction on certain products, the Chinese ministry said, without elaborating,” Cheng reported. “Neither did it offer any specifics on how a U.S.-China Board of Investment would operate, though the White House said Thursday that Trump and Xi had discussed ‘increasing Chinese investment into our industries.'”

“U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Sunday the trade board would help the two countries decide which exports are charged tariffs and which are exempted,” Cheng reported. “‘We’re going to have conversations with the Chinese about stuff we should be selling them—ag, and Boeing, and medical devices—and the kinds of things we want to be getting from them, whether it’s consumer goods or low tech or other inputs that we don’t have here,’ he said on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ ‘Most importantly,’ Greer added, ‘we have strategic stability with China.'”