> Meantime, other soybean manufacturers will dial up production, so when the tariffs are dropped by China, the US soybean manufacturers will be selling to an oversupplied market, dropping the price.
I don't think so. Doing some Googling, it looks like China's soybean imports (100 million tons) could be more than satisfied by the production of Brazil and Argentina (139 million tons). US production is 108 million tons.
Soybeans are fungible, so instead of other producers ramping up soybean production, I think we'll see production stay constant while trading relationships reconfigure around the tariffs. For instance: China can replace American soybeans with Brazilian ones, and American soybeans will then go to wherever the Brazilian soybeans were going to previously.
China, according to those links, purchases 60% of all global soybean exports.
Looking up the figures, about another 30% is the EU, with 10% for everybody else.
Now, the EU is increasing their US soybean imports, but they cannot make up the shortfall even if they wanted to, and are only really increasing their imports from the US because US soybeans are currently cheaper than South American ones.
Also, the EU are not really that interested in helping the US on this one without first getting concessions in the ongoing EU vs US trade war.
Out of this, the EU have so far managed to get Trump to promise to drop much of the EU trade war in return for the EU buying more US soybeans, which is something the EU were going to do anyway and as I said before, will only cover a fraction of the reduction in US exports to China.
Also, the EU continuing not to target US soybeans exports is all rather dependent on Trump keeping to his word on not continuing the EU part of his trade war, if he restarts it, those reassurances are going to leave the table.
I don't think so. Doing some Googling, it looks like China's soybean imports (100 million tons) could be more than satisfied by the production of Brazil and Argentina (139 million tons). US production is 108 million tons.
Soybeans are fungible, so instead of other producers ramping up soybean production, I think we'll see production stay constant while trading relationships reconfigure around the tariffs. For instance: China can replace American soybeans with Brazilian ones, and American soybeans will then go to wherever the Brazilian soybeans were going to previously.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/world-leaders-in-soya-so...
https://www.world-grain.com/articles/10955-china-soybean-imp...