Historically, China has been the top buyer of US soybeans by “a staggering margin,” says the American Soybean Association. This year, with US soybeans facing retaliatory tariffs amid the ongoing trade war, China is going elsewhere.
In a letter urging President Trump to cut a deal with China that removes China’s retaliatory duties and includes “significant soybean purchase commitments,” the ASA says China “currently has zero new crop export orders for US soybeans on the books for marketing year 2025/26.”
Interesting proposal. Even assuming you could get people to switch their protein intake from animal sources (until literally all the cows and pigs have died, that’s never going to happen in significant numbers), would the USA have the infrastructure? Processing factories and such?
It would be easier to make those than to make factories for microchips and… nearly everything else.