The White House’s plan to aid Argentina appears to have backfired.
According to a photo of a private text on the phone of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Argentina responded to the treasury secretary’s $20 billion bailout by turning around and removing its export taxes on soybeans and striking a huge new deal with China. That diminished the price of U.S. soybeans and weakened U.S. trade leverage with China, which immediately pulled out of its existing arrangements with soybean farmers in America’s heartland.
The photo taken by Angelina Katsanis for the Associated Press last week shows Bessent reading a text that appears to be from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
“Finally—just a heads up, I’m getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate,” the text said. “We bailed out Argentina yesterday and in return, the Argentine’s [sic] are removing their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China, at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us.”
A second message said, “On a plane but Scott I can call you when I land.”
Last week, Bessent outlined on X a plan to financially support Argentina following extensive talks between longtime allies President Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei, a libertarian economist with a populist, Trump-like appeal, known for wielding a chain saw and cloning his enormous mastiff dogs.
The Treasury has arranged a $20 billion swap line with Argentina’s central bank, part of an effort to infuse the South American country with capital. Stabilizing Argentina ahead of an October midterm would help Milei’s chances of staying in power. Milei has had more success taming Argentina’s hyperinflation than first expected, but has been dealing with a brewing currency crisis and several corruption scandals.
Amid Argentina’s talks with the U.S., China ordered at least 10 cargoes of soybeans from the South American country, Reuters reported, citing multiple traders.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Treasury Department did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.
China wins; soybean farmers lose
This turnabout—with the U.S. rushing to Argentina’s defense, which rushed into China’s arms, jilting American farmers—has infuriated the slice of rural America that backed Trump to avoid precisely this sort of international trade disaster. Soybeans are vital to the U.S. agricultural industry, accounting for 20% of the U.S.’s cash crop receipts in 2024, worth $46.8 billion.
“The frustration is overwhelming,” the American Soybean Association (ASA) president Caleb Ragland said in a statement last week. “U.S. soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the U.S. government is extending [$20 billion] in economic support to Argentina while that country drops its soybean export taxes to sell 20 shiploads of Argentine soybeans to China in just two days.”
According to USDA data, China—which received nearly a quarter of the U.S.’s soybean exports in 2024—has not ordered any U.S. soybeans since May. Meanwhile, Brazil’s market share of Chinese soybean imports have ballooned to 71% as of last year, according to the ASA.
China will continue to do business with whatever country will give it the best deal, Ryan Loy, assistant professor and extension economist for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, told Fortune. Right now, that’s not the U.S.
“There’s a lot of politics involved, but at the end of the day, it’s a function of who is cheaper on the market,” Loy said.
Soybean farmers told Fortune the ongoing trade nightmare is a flashback to Trump’s 2018 and 2019 trade war with China, when farmers lost $27 billion in agricultural exports. While the agricultural industry recovered the losses through a $28 billion bailout, soybean farmers warned their market share with China never recovered from the trade war.
“The takeaway that we have from the data of the last time we did this is that the U.S. lost about 20% of our market share, and it never came back,” Todd Main, the director of market development at the Illinois Soybean Association, told Fortune.
Trump proposed a plan last week to use tariff revenues to help fund farmer subsidies, but farmers have expressed the need for repaired trade with China.
“We can grow anything. What we really want is good relations with our trading partners,” Main said. “We want markets. We don’t want bailouts.”
