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Posted on 10/11/2025 6:06:42 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For many years now, many Americans have been muttering under our breath, “Why do we buy so much from China?”
Whether we’re at a clothing store, a computer superstore or a big box discounter, the question is the same as we see that label on the box.
The same goes for us in the business world, as we find ourselves forced to buy parts, components, even finished goods made in China, because they just aren’t available anywhere else. Not in the USA, not in Mexico, often nowhere on earth except China. It’s unacceptable, but sometimes, we’re stuck.
So we elected President Trump, and he committed to reducing our tax and regulatory burdens, and to raising tariff barriers on China so that American companies would find it competitive again to make everything here — as we used to.
It’s hard sometimes, but we understand both sides, and we’re living with it.
What we talk about less — because it’s harder, and frankly, because it’s more remote, more hidden — is how all this affects our export market. We may hate buying from China, but we don’t mind selling to China.
Just as China is happy to export to us, we are happy to export to China. We figure we’re finally getting some of our money back, after all. We’ve had this massive trade deficit for all these years, and the only reason it isn’t worse is that we do sell the Chinese a lot of products — mostly raw materials for their manufacturing engine to improve and food for their people to eat.
We ship them soybeans, integrated circuits, petroleum, vehicles, and more. But the one in the news these days is the soybeans.
Soybeans are our number-one export crop to China.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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Chairman Xi’s politburo in Beijing can give an order, and China increases or decreases its purchases the next day. In the USA, it’s up to hundreds of corporations, and countless thousands of independent farmers, who await those orders — just as it’s hundreds of corporations and countless thousands of manufacturers and distributors who make the individual choices, item by item, purchase order by purchase order, to buy what China is selling.
So one of the problems with the theory of free trade is that it can’t really exist as long as some countries are free and others are not.
Our government can set tariffs, quotas, penalties, and taxes, but our government can’t directly tell American business whether or not to buy or sell anything. By contrast, Chairman Xi can. He can give an order, and it’s done.
The farmers growing soybeans have to get a new market and/or farm something else. The Chinese went from buying $13bn of American soybeans to literally zero once the tariff war started, shifting most of their purchases to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Those purchases are never coming back to the US.
The farmers need to shift to another non-China dominated food crop. That is the only path forward for them. I am sure they will get some cash from the government this year, but they need to use as much of that cash to ‘retool’ and shift to new crops. I am not a farmer, I am sure I am making it sound simple, and I know for may farmers it may not be possible (I read somewhere that up to a third may lose their farms this year), but I just do not see how they can continue planting a crop where they must sell half of it to China. As much as that might have worked well in the past, it’s quite clear that’s history now. Even if a new president came that bowed and groveled to China, by the time that happened China would have spent billions on building up the infrastructure in South America for their soy exports. They’re not coming back, and the farmers better evolve and adjust to that. And yes, I know easier said than done, but what’s the alternative?
Interesting. Should our corn be subsidized for ethanol when it can be exported as food? Should soybeans at the supermarket be free while the subsidies are in place?
Edamame’s good for you. That and a Kirin.
I genuinely do not know about edamame or whether subsidies should/should not be or even what a kirin is.
I do know though that farmers cannot continue to depend on an export where China is the major buyer and can immediately go from buying billions of Dollars worth to (absolute) zero. There’s no path for them in soy.
And yet many deny that China desires world domination.
How many wars has China fought in the past 40 years?
Answer: 0.
The last war they fought lasted 1 month, in 1979.
Contrast that with the US and its recent history.
Who is the warmonger?
Soybeans are livestock food, and an industrial product..Very little of is eaten by humans. We eat the creatures that eat soybeans.
Bkmk
Foodstuffs are fungible. The Chinese buy more from Central America, then that’s product they cannot sell elsewhere. Which leaves the US to sell to that underserved market. The market wil find it’s own level eventually.
CC
That’s an important point. There is no combat experience in their institutional memory. None of their senior officers have combat experience. And from what I’ve seen of their conscripts doesn’t inspire awe. Due to the one child policy and the cultural preference for boys (read: females aborted) has led to a unique phenomenon. That is the “little emperor syndrome”. Essentially, it’s created a bunch of spoiled male brats. And when they show up to boot camp they’re ill-equipped to handle it.
CC
Searching online for:
- soybean byproducts
- corn byproducts
will help people to understand the values of the crops, and their market distributions, and the demand and distribution of the byproducts.
Potentially imaginary impressions.
Likely a fighting force superior to ours that spent the last 4 yrs focused on equality for trans-sexuals.
Their build out is very impressive. Napoleon: There is only one thing you cannot do with a bayonet — sit on it.
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