A battlefield report: Neither side is winning US-China trade war
China is buying American soybeans again, much to bean growers’ relief. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China has agreed to buy 918 million bushels in each of the next three years. President Donald Trump crowed, “Our farmers will be very happy!” With concessions from China on rare earths and fentanyl in addition to soybeans, Trump…
China is buying American soybeans again, much to bean growers’ relief. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China has agreed to buy 918 million bushels in each of the next three years. President Donald Trump crowed, “Our farmers will be very happy!”
With concessions from China on rare earths and fentanyl in addition to soybeans, Trump is declaring victory in the trade war. His meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping was, he said, a 12 on a scale of one to 10.
Some commentators, however, think it’s Xi who should be taking the victory lap. In their view, China’s strong retaliatory measures on soybeans and rare earths forced the US to back down on 100% tariffs, on port fees and on stricter AI-chip export controls. Meanwhile, they contend, China gave up relatively little in return.
Among the unimpressed were the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers, who said the Trump-Xi deal “mostly restores the status quo that prevailed in May.” A New York Times story suggested Xi had made the US blink. It was headlined, “The Art of Letting Trump Claim a Win, While Walking Away Stronger.”
The truth, in my view, is more complicated than either Trump or the commentators let on. Neither side has won the trade war; the war hasn’t ended. What Trump and Xi agreed to was a truce, not a peace treaty.
Nor is either side clearly winning. Each has shown it can inflict great pain on the other. Neither is making much progress in achieving its war aims. In these two respects, the US-China trade war increasingly resembles the Russia-Ukraine war.
Some have used the word stalemate to describe both wars. But in chess, where the word originated, a stalemate ends the conflict in a draw. These conflicts are far from over
Though the 100% tariffs were lifted and the 20% fentanyl tariff halved, these reductions leave China’s exports subject to a 47% tariff. While the U.S. will be able to buy desperately needed rare earths from China, which has a near-monopoly on them, the Chinese only suspended their strict new export restrictions for a year.
For China, a victory in the trade war would drastically reduce the tariff rate. But high tariffs are one of President Trump’s unshakeable beliefs. He’s been advocating them for four decades.
Indeed, he’s counting on them to trigger an American manufacturing renaissance. For him, victory in the trade war would include Chinese accepting high tariffs. (A bigger victory would be an end to China’s attempts to put foreign manufacturers out of business, but that’s so unimaginable he’s stopped asking for it.)
Because their war aims directly conflict, a win-win peace treaty will be hard to reach. The Trump administration thinks hitting China’s economy with high tariffs will eventually force the Chinese to back down. It’s probably underestimating how much pain China’s rulers can make the country take.
For their part, Chinese officials may expect Trump to reverse himself or at least lose interest in the fight. They may be underestimating Trump’s love of tariffs.
Though the war isn’t over, the truce could last a while. Both Xi and Trump seem to want a somewhat calmer relationship. Still, the situation is volatile. Both countries are scrambling to reduce their dependence on the other. Hostilities could resume at any moment.
That’s a possibility soybean farmers would forget at their peril. They’re of course grateful to have China buying again even if, as the president of the American Soybean Association pointed out in an interview with DTN’s Senior Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton, the purchases aren’t enough to make soybean growing profitable. But when the truce ends, so most likely will the purchases.
And while Chinese purchases help soybean growers in the short run, they leave them with the continuing problem of being overdependent on China. What they really need is more markets. Lots of them.
Viewed that way, the trade agreements Trump reached with Malaysia and Cambodia and the trade frameworks with Thailand and Vietnam might turn out to be more important for farmers than the China deal. There are still some questions about these agreements, but Bessent said these countries would buy 698 million bushels.
If that turns out to be true, it would be a godsend for soybean farmers. And if the administration can negotiate a few more of these agreements, it will have gone a long way toward ending the overdependence. With sufficient diversification, a rupture in the US-China truce would be a lot less scary for soybean farmers.
Former longtime Wall Street Journal Asia correspondent and editorUrban Lehneris editor emeritus of DTN/The Progressive Farmer.
Thisarticle,originally published on November 3by the latter news organization and now republished by Asia Times with permission, is © Copyright 2025 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved. FollowUrban LehneronX @urbanize
