Trump’s trade war has cemented Brazil’s place as the soybean superpower, says The Economist

a US$10bn agricultural-relief package. It is also raising costs for crushers in China’s Shandong province, who press beans into animal feed and cooking oil. But there has been one big winner: soybean producers in Brazil. The rift between American farmers and their Chinese clients has let Brazil cement its place as the world’s soybean superpower. It is not the first time Brazil has profited from Trumpian trade conflict. The same thing happened when Mr Trump yanked up tariffs on China in his first term. The proportion of China’s vast market for soybean supplied by Brazil leapt from about half in 2017 to three-quarters in 2018. Prices drooped after that, but in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine they soared back close to record highs. Brazilian farmers frantically snapped up land and planted soya, pushing shipments to Asia and Europe in 2023 past 100m tons, a record. That investment binge caused “a bit of a hangover”, says Marcela Marini of Rabobank, a Dutch bank that ...