President Donald Trump promised farmers that his trade policies would deliver better deals and expanded markets.

Ohio’s soybean farmers—who once exported over $1 billion annually to China—were counting on those promises. Instead, the administration is returning to the same old failed playbook from his first term: unenforceable agreements and bailouts.

The pattern is well-established: Trump launches tariffs, trading partners retaliate by targeting American agricultural exports, crop prices plummet, farm bankruptcies spike, and then comes the bailout, with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars spent compensating farmers for markets lost due to avoidable retaliation.

This isn’t the art of the deal but the wages of a foolish pursuit of protectionism. U.S. agriculture has been paying the price for years.

American farmers have been forced to watch from the sidelines

After taking office in 2017, one of Trump’s first official actions was to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

Perhaps no sector stood to benefit more from the partnership than American agriculture, as the agreement would have opened notoriously closed Asian agricultural markets to U.S. exports.

Instead, Trump forced U.S. farmers to watch from the sidelines as their competitors in Canada and elsewhere received preferential access for their products.

Then came the China tariffs and Beijing’s predictable retaliation through the surgical targeting of politically sensitive agricultural industries.

American soybean exports to China collapsed from $12 billion in 2017 to just $3 billion in 2018 as purchases were redirected to Brazil and Argentina.

Ohio farmers felt this collapse acutely. The state’s soybean exports to China plummeted from $1.1 billion in 2016 to just $158 million in 2018—an 86 percent decline.

Despite occasional upticks, Ohio’s soybean sales to China have never fully recovered, bottoming out at $101 million in 2023.

A loophole for China

Through July 2025 — the latest data available— Buckeye State farmers exported a mere $14 million to China.

Trump’s solution? Nearly $28 billion in bailout payments between 2018–2019 alone.

By 2020, a staggering 40 percent of net farm income came from government subsidies. President Trump’s second term has brought more of the same, including a deal with China that lacks meaningful enforcement mechanisms.

After months of tariffs and Chinese retaliation left soybeans sitting in storage, the president announced a late October agreement under which China agreed to purchase 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by year’s end and 25 million metric tons annually through 2028.

Yet the new deal contains a potential loophole for Beijing: China will likely only purchase soybeans based on “market prices.” That means if American soybeans aren’t the cheapest option, Beijing can simply walk away from its commitments.

These concerns are now materializing.

After a brief flurry of orders in late October — in the wake of the deal’s announcement — Bloomberg reported that Chinese purchases of American soybeans have stalled.

According to a very recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report, China has purchased only two shipments — totaling 332,000 metric tons — between Oct. 2 through Nov. 12.

This is a far cry from the 12 million metric tons that the Trump administration said China agreed to purchase by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, U.S. soybeans still face a 13-percent tariff and are trading at a premium to South American beans, giving Chinese commercial crushers little incentive to book American cargoes.

Kang Wei Cheang, an agricultural broker in Singapore, told Bloomberg China’s commitment to buy 12 million tons of American soybeans is “more of a diplomatic gesture than a firm trade deal.”

Assuming China fulfills every commitment — past experience and early evidence suggests that’s unlikely — U.S. soybean exports to China in 2025 would reach only 18.2 million metric tons, a 32% decline from 2024 and farmers’ worst year since 2018.

Beyond their export troubles, farmers also face soaring input costs. Current tariffs average more than 12 percent across key agricultural inputs, up from just 1% before Trump’s tariff offensive.

Rates exceed 20% on some pesticides and hit 16% on tractors and machinery. On Nov. 14, the administration eliminated reciprocal tariffs on certain fertilizers —a welcome but insufficient step.

Farmers still face elevated tariffs on a host of critical inputs needed to plant and harvest their crops.

Testifying before Congress in October, the American Soybean Association’s president explained that, with the added pressure of high production costs – stemming from other tariffs – soybean farmers expect losses of around $109 per acre for this year’s crop. Farm bankruptcies in the first half of 2025, meanwhile, surged 57 percent compared to 2024.

Farmers would rather earn their keep

Perhaps predictably, the Trump administration has responded by preparing yet another farm bailout, to the reported tune of $10–14 billion.

Even if the money materializes, it’s the wrong solution. Farmers would rather earn their keep by selling abroad than collecting checks from Washington.

But exports could prove an uphill battle for years to come as trading partners diversify away from American suppliers in response to Washington’s trade war. Between 2017 and 2024, Brazilian soy production expanded by 40 percent to meet Chinese demand — virtually all at the expense of American soybean farmers.

Once disrupted, trading relationships often prove difficult to rebuild.

Ohio’s farmers need real market access, predictable and enforceable trade policy, and lower input costs through agreements like Trans-Pacific Partnership and tariff relief.

What they’ve been given are managed trade agreements with unenforceable commitments, year-to-year uncertainty, and tariffs that raise production expenses – burdens that many of their foreign competitors don’t have.

America’s farmers are losing across the board.

Export markets have collapsed. Input costs have soared. Bankruptcies are surging. In turn, they are receiving more bailouts, which farmers would gladly forgo for expanded and stable market access abroad.

Until Washington stops treating agriculture as a bargaining chip and starts treating it as an industry worthy of genuine market-expanding policies, farmers will continue suffering the consequences of decisions made far from their fields.