The rebound in United States soybean exports is under way in the new 2026-27 marketing year thanks largely to China's return as a buyer, Farm Progress reports, but climbing out of the hole dug by the 2025 trade war and reclaiming lost market share will be the hard part.

As of late August, new-crop sales commitments for 2026-27 delivery totalled nearly 16.3 million tonnes (598.2 million bushels), more than double the same point last year when China was absent. China began buying new-crop US soybeans actively in late July; by 27 August its outstanding purchases stood at 7.76 million tonnes (285.1 million bushels). The buying helped drive November futures above $13 a bushel in early September, a two-and-a-half-year high.

Those commitments are about 31% of the 25 million-tonne annual purchase target that came out of last autumn's trade truce with the Trump administration, before which China bought no US beans for about six months and turned to Brazil. At the recent pace the target could be met by the end of 2026 or early 2027 — a positive step that will still not make American growers whole.

The US share of global soybean exports shrank to 22% last year from around 40% a decade earlier. Soybeans were long the country's most valuable farm export, averaging $28.5 billion a year from 2021 to 2024 on Census Bureau data; in 2025 exports fell 34% to $16.2 billion, and shipments in 2025-26 hit a 13-year low. Domestic crushers have absorbed a growing share to meet higher federal biofuel mandates, with crush in 2026-27 projected at a record for the sixth straight year.

Brazil, which supplied over 60% of world soybean exports last year, remains decisive. Its planting expansion appears to be pausing, with area flat to fractionally higher this year as margins are squeezed, Matthew Kruse, president of Commstock Investments, said at the 2026 Farm Progress Show — but it will still produce a huge crop barring a weather disaster, and long term "Brazil is going to continue to grow and be a force."

Source: Farm Progress