China Promised to Buy More U.S. Farm Goods. It Hasn’t Happened.

When President Trump met with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in May, the United States announced that China had agreed to sharply increase its purchases of American agricultural products.

The pledge, one of China’s major commitments after the high-profile meeting, appeared to offer relief to U.S. farmers battered by the trade war between the two countries.

Four months later, there is little sign of a broad Chinese buying spree.

The White House announced in May that China would buy at least $17 billion a year of U.S. farm goods through 2028, with the target prorated for 2026. Soybeans were not included: China had already vowed separately to step up purchases from American farmers.

Yet in the first seven months of 2026, China bought only $3.9 billion of U.S. agricultural products, excluding soybeans, according to the most recent Agriculture Department data. The amount was only slightly more than during the same period last year, when sales were at a six-year low as the two countries imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on each other.

“They’re not keeping that promise and it hasn’t been talked about,” said Ishan Bhanu, the lead agricultural commodities analyst at Kpler, which tracks trade flows.

The sluggish pace of China’s purchases could become a point of contention when Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi meet again at a summit this week. During his first term, Mr. Trump accused Beijing of “letting us down” by reneging on pledges to buy American agricultural products and called its failure to buy soybeans an “economically hostile” act.

The figures reveal a sharp divide in the composition of Beijing’s trade with American farmers. It is on track to fulfill its soybean pledge, while demand for other U.S. farm products remains soft.

That uneven approach reflects China’s dual strategy in dealing with Mr. Trump, analysts say. Beijing wants to show that it is making a good-faith effort to improve relations with the president, who is eager to support farmers ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. But it also does not want to surrender its leverage or appear to be making unilateral concessions to the United States.

“The U.S. may have a legitimate view that China is slow-walking the implementation of their May 14 commitments,” said Han Lin, the China country director for The Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm based in Washington.

Mr. Lin said the approach stems from Beijing’s underlying distrust of Mr. Trump, even as Chinese officials view him as “certainly more manageable” than more hawkish officials in his administration.

“They understand a large aspect of getting to substantive discussions with the U.S. is paying attention to the performative aspects and making sure Trump looks good,” he said.

China has never confirmed the $17 billion figure, saying only that it had “set indicative targets for expanding two-way agricultural trade.”

Kate Lair, assistant U.S. trade representative for public and media affairs, referred to a May fact sheet from the White House that said the commitment would be prorated for this year. China’s commerce ministry and foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

But even with the prorated target, Beijing’s current pace of buying means it will have to accelerate spending significantly over the rest of the year.

For now, soybeans appear to be the only sector seeing a significant boost.

After Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi met last October, China bought 12.4 million tons of soybeans from the United States in 2025, according to Jim Sutter, the chief executive officer of the U.S. Soybean Export Council. So far this year, China has made additional purchases amounting to about half of the 25-million-ton, full-year commitment that Washington said was promised.

The purchases put the industry “sort of back on track,” Mr. Sutter said.

Soybean prices are now trading near a three-year high, hovering around $13 a bushel, driven in part by Chinese demand.

That is a far cry from Mr. Trump’s first term, when China imposed a 25 percent tariff on U.S. agricultural exports in retaliation for American tariffs on Chinese imports. China is the largest foreign buyer of U.S. soybeans and its purchases plunged.

The consequences for American farmers were severe. Storage bins filled up, crops risked rotting and the Trump administration ultimately stepped in with a $23 billion bailout program for farmers. The dispute also accelerated Beijing’s shift toward purchasing soybeans from Brazil, another major producer.

In recent weeks, as the meeting between the two leaders drew closer, China has sped up its purchases.

In August, Sinograin, the state-owned enterprise that manages China’s grain reserves, began stepping up its orders of U.S. soybeans, according to Mr. Bhanu, the Kpler analyst. Usually, purchases happen earlier in the year, he said, suggesting that Beijing had initially been uncertain about whether to fulfill its commitments.

Mr. Bhanu said that Sinograin’s role was also telling.

“It shows that it’s a geopolitical deal,” he said. Sinograin did not respond to a request for comment.

China has other reasons to buy American soybeans. Brazil’s soybean inventories have tightened significantly, potentially giving Beijing an incentive to seek an alternative supply source if the Brazilian crop disappoints.

But that commercial logic does not apply as clearly to other American agricultural products.

Sorghum, for example, was among the products Mr. Trump said last October that China would buy in “massive amounts.” Yet sales have been relatively tepid.

Tim Lust, chief executive officer of the National Sorghum Producers, a group representing the American sorghum industry, said China had bought about 20 percent less sorghum from the United States than historical averages.

“All agriculture is struggling right now. From a profitability standpoint, it’s a tough situation,” Mr. Lust said. “It is important for us to get back to a managed trade situation and be able to know that we have consistency.”

For corn, the situation is bleak. Corn sales to China amounted to about $6.9 million from January to July this year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is a fraction of the sales in 2022, when China bought $5.2 billion of the crop.

Analysts say the sales of wheat, cotton, beef and pork also remain well below recent levels.

China also faces structural obstacles to buying more American agricultural products. An additional 10 percent Chinese tariff on U.S. goods remains in place, while weakness in the Chinese economy has weighed on demand.

From a purely commercial standpoint, buying significantly more U.S. agricultural goods “doesn’t really make sense for China,” said Fred Gale, an expert on China’s agricultural markets and a former economist at the U.S. Agriculture Department.

“For most Chinese private-sector buyers, it’s not really feasible to buy American products,” Mr. Gale said. “State-owned companies aren’t coming in to buy large amounts of grain or pork. It’s hard to see exactly what China has in mind, whether they actually intend to meet those objectives.”