THE GIST
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Beijing may be making promises it won't keep.
China has committed to purchasing at least $17 billion of U.S. agricultural products in 2026, 2027, and 2028 — a happy byproduct of the Trump-Xi summit last week.
That includes soybean purchase commitments (separate from $17 billion order), beef access for American ranchers, and resuming poultry imports from states deemed free of avian influenza.
WHAT HAPPENED
Before we get too excited about this: Anyone with even a faint memory of the first Trump term, should know that this sounds eerily similar to the original Phase One trade deal, signed in January 2020. That deal also featured similarly ambitious agricultural purchase targets, but didn't yield too much.
In 2020, China agreed to purchase at least $200 billion of goods above a 2017 baseline over two years, including $32 billion more in agriculture. But it ultimately fell short of its commitment by roughly 60% for goods, due partly to Chinese efforts to diversify suppliers and the disruptions of COVID-19.
This time, the commitment goes well beyond soybeans, which have historically dominated U.S. agricultural exports to China. The product list also explicitly includes corn, pork, beef, and poultry, broadening the base of American farming operations that stand to benefit. The multi-year structure is also notable because it's designed to give U.S. producers something the last agreement conspicuously failed to deliver: predictability.
But it's not easy to forget how catastrophic the collapse of Phase One's purchases was for American farmers. In response to the farm income downturn created by the pullback in Chinese purchases, the first Trump Administration provided a total of $23 billion in economic aid directly to farmers and ranchers. In other words, the U.S. government ended up essentially subsidizing the failure of its own trade deal.
Then the tariff war made it even worse for American agriculture. U.S. agricultural exports to China fell 65.7% year-on-year to just $8.4 billion in 2025 after rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs sharply curtailed trade.
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WHY IT MATTERS
So the $17 billion target, while framed as a floor, is actually asking China to more than double the level of purchases it made just last year, which is obviously an enormous ask. A major concern across all of Trump's recent bilateral agreements is the absence of enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with market access commitments.
The Phase One deal had a tiered dispute resolution mechanism, but it was widely regarded as toothless. There is no publicly available information yet about what enforcement mechanism, if any, is built into this new $17 billion commitment.
And it's curious of China to make this level of commitment when it's expressly trying to reduce its dependence on U.S. agricultural imports. China has dramatically scaled back on U.S. farm goods since Trump's first term, sourcing roughly 20% of its soybeans from the U.S. Brazil has been the primary beneficiary, and Beijing has spent years cultivating South American supply chains precisely to reduce its vulnerability to U.S. leverage.
But the geopolitical moment matters. This deal was struck during the first U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017. Both leaders appear to want a stabilization narrative. Especially against the backdrop of this war. Trump, for one, definitely needs this win to keep his approval ratings from hitting the floor.
WHAT'S NEXT
Whether hope becomes reality will depend on consistent follow-through by both parties and a geopolitical and market environment that allows the deal to endure. Frankly, that's a lot of complexity to hold constant over three years.
The $17 billion floor is more ambitious than it sounds given the starting point of $8.4 billion last year, and it covers a broader product range than previous commitments. But if history is any evidence, and in Beijing's case it should be, China missed that deal's targets by 60% without meaningful consequence.
