President Donald Trump’s trade war just hit home in farm country, and a Republican senator is saying the quiet part out loud. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa acknowledged Friday that China’s soybean boycott is hammering U.S. growers and that the blame traces back to the administration’s on-again, off-again trade war. “We’ve lost a lot of soybean contracts due to these elongated negotiations,” she said in a Newsmax hit, adding that Iowa producers “want trade, not aid.”
China, by far America’s biggest soybean customer, hasn’t booked U.S. beans for the current marketing year and has shifted aggressively to South America, a pivot that’s gutted prices and left bins stuffed across the Midwest. Analysts warn the hole is measured in billions and growing. One survey of cash markets this week put farm-gate prices around $9, far below the $14–$15 many growers need to break even, while processors say domestic biofuel demand can’t backfill the loss of the world’s largest buyer.
China typically accounts for roughly 60 percent of global soybean imports and used to soak up as much as 45 percent of U.S. exports. With Beijing buying Brazilian and Argentine cargoes instead, American shipments have nosedived and rural equipment dealers and co-ops are feeling the whiplash. “We are scrambling for any buyer we can find,” one Illinois farmer told reporters as export commitments cratered.
Ernst’s candor breaks the MAGA sound barrier because she’s been a reliable Trump ally. Yet even she conceded that talk of a White House bailout is landing like a lead balloon back home. “They don’t like it, they consider it welfare,” she said, pushing the administration to end the boycott rather than write checks. The White House, meanwhile, is weighing a farm-aid package in the $10–$14 billion range to blunt the tariff fallout, according to reporting amplified by ag outlets Thursday.
That “trade, not aid” refrain isn’t new for Ernst, but it’s far more explosive with beans stranded and cash flows drying up. Farm groups are sounding alarms that once China rewires supply chains to South America, the shift could stick even if Washington and Beijing declare a truce. The American Farm Bureau now projects a steep slide in overall U.S. ag exports to China this year, with further declines possible in 2026, the lowest since the first trade war erupted in 2018.
After months of tariff escalations and “temporary truces,” the administration ratcheted duties high enough to make U.S. beans uncompetitive in China’s ports, then eased slightly, then threatened more. The result, traders say, is peak uncertainty and a buyer who walked. Brazil, flush with a record crop and boosted by Chinese investments in ports and rail, grabbed the business and isn’t eager to hand it back.
Inside the West Wing, the political fix looks familiar: plug the hole with subsidies and blame Beijing. Out in the countryside, the math is merciless. A $9 cash price against $14 costs doesn’t pencil, and “aid” checks can’t rebuild lost markets. That’s why Ernst’s slip of honesty matters, it validates what growers have been muttering to their bankers for months: the trade war didn’t just hurt farm country, it’s crushing it.
Even so, Ernst couldn’t resist a closing genuflection. If anyone can cut a deal, she said, it’s Trump. Farmers are still waiting. And with harvest rolling and China still on the sidelines, hope is not a marketing plan.
