800 326 9054China will buy at least $17 billion in U.S. agricultural commodities each year for the next three years – on top of preexisting commitments on soybeans – as part of a deal struck during President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, according to the White House. In addition to those purchases, the administration separately secured commitments to revive poultry and beef exports.
The $17 billion of U.S. ag purchases in 2026, 2027 and 2028 are on top of the 25 million metric tons of soybeans China agreed to buy in October, according to a White House fact sheet published Sunday. The 2026 numbers will be prorated, it adds.
In an interview with CBS on Sunday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the purchase commitments are for “aggregate” agricultural products, and could include additional soybean buys, but also other commodities.
“When I say aggregate, I mean everything else. That could be soybeans, that could be beef, that could be grains, that could be dairy products, all kinds of things,” he said.
But he stressed that these commitments are “on top of” Beijing’s October soybean commitments.
In 2024, the U.S. exported around $24 billion of agricultural products to China, according to USDA data. Soybeans have typically accounted for around $11 billion of these sales.
The fact sheet also provided new details on China’s commitments to restore market access to U.S. poultry exporters. The Phase One deal signed in 2020 established strict criteria for when Beijing could limit poultry exports from U.S. states affected by bird flu. But since that agreement, several that have long been free from the virus have still faced bans exporting into the Chinese market.
On the back of Trump’s visit, China has “resumed imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the USDA to be free of highly pathogenic avian influenza,” the fact sheet reads.
Ahead of the two bilateral meetings last week between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing reinstated export registrations for more than 400 U.S. beef facilities, which had lapsed last year. The fact sheet says Beijing has also committed to working with U.S. regulators to lift suspensions on 38 facilities.
However, the White House makes no mention of beef import quotas, which the Chinese government uses to manage beef imports. The U.S. received quotas for 164,000 metric tons this year.
Greg Tyler, president and CEO of the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council, told Agri-Pulse Sunday that he would need to dig into the finer details of the poultry announcement, but that the lifting of state poultry export bans would be a “huge win.”
China is a prominent buyer of U.S. chicken paws, which have little demand in other markets.
“We are obviously very grateful to the Trump administration for their work on this and look forward to more details so that we can resume our exports to that very important market,” Tyler said.
If all the states that should be eligible to ship poultry products to China see their bans removed, Tyler added, that would result in exports from 19 additional states, including major broiler-producing states like Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
USTR did not immediately respond to a request to clarify whether all 19 states would see their market access restored.
Greer also said Sunday during an appearance on ABC that China had agreed to look at its approvals of U.S. biotechnology traits. However, the fact sheet makes no mention of such a commitment.
The “cornerstone” of the latest U.S.-China negotiations is the establishment of two new mechanisms to foster cooperation on bilateral trade and investment, the fact sheet says. The “Board of Trade” and “Board of Investment” will offer a “government-to-government forum” for officials to discuss trade and investment issues, according to the fact sheet.
These vehicles are “unprecedented,” former Senior Trade Representative for China at the Office of the United States Trade Representative Sara Schuman told Agri-Pulse on Friday. The decision to focus the panels on discussions in non-strategic sectors is a novel concept, she added.
“This is more limited,” she said, than previous administrations’ efforts. “And it also means accepting that in those strategic sectors there may be more restrictions than in non-strategic sectors. So, in a way, they’re sort of defining a new trading relationship with China, which we really haven’t done before.”
On CBS on Sunday, Greer said that Board of Trade would serve as a venue to discuss agricultural trade, among other issues.
In that same interview, however, Greer did not rule out higher tariffs on China. But he stressed that Beijing is aware of this possibility and higher duties, up to the rate China faced in October, would not derail the deal.
Most Chinese imports faced a U.S. tariff rate of 20% in October, when Trump and Xi reached a truce. When the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs in February, the U.S. only reinstated a 10% global tariff, effectively providing a tariff cut to China of around 10 percentage points.
USTR has two trade investigations underway that could result in additional tariffs on Beijing. Greer has previously said that he expects those to be completed this summer.
“The Chinese know – and that’s part of our deal – that the United States can elevate tariffs to the higher level that we had at the time of what we call the Busan deal in October,” Greer told CBS. “The Chinese know, just like many other countries we’re dealing with, that we’re going to have a certain level of tariff to control our imports, but that we also expect market opening.”
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*Sourced from Agri-Pulse.