Soybean prices continue to fall as China purchases only half of promised soybeans from the US

Published Dec 19, 2025

Tridge summary

Favorable weather for soybean crops in South America and low soybean sales from the US to China are putting pressure on soybean quotes in Chicago, which have been falling for more than a month. January soybean futures on SWOT have decreased by another 2% since the beginning of the week to $386.6/t (-8% in places)

Original content

under the pressure of actual data on export sales to China. Due to the US government shutdown in October and November, the USDA is currently providing export sales statistics with a delay. As of November 27, US soybean export sales were 21.829 million tonnes, down 39.3% from the same period last year. The USDA reports that less than 5 million tons of soybeans were sold to China, although market participants believe the actual volume is much higher. In addition, almost 3 million tons of US soybeans were sold with an “unknown destination” label, and such shipments may be redirected to the Chinese market during shipment. According to Bloomberg , China has contracted at least 7 million tons of soybeans from the United States in the past two weeks, but has not fulfilled a promise made to US officials to purchase 12 million tons of American soybeans by the end of 2025. Sinograin, the state-owned company responsible for managing China’s strategic grain reserves, has played a key role in ...

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