China is buying new-crop beans again. It is still less than half of what it used to be.

The soybean rally has two legs. One is the crop, covered in our WASDE preview. The other is China, and that one is worth understanding on its own terms before you decide how much of the crop to price at $13.

The deal

Following the May summit, China agreed to buy at least $17 billion in U.S. ag products a year and no less than 25 million metric tons of soybeans annually through 2028. It had earlier committed to 12 million tons for the 2025 marketing year, which it hit by May.

As of mid-August, China had bought about 5.7 million tons of 2026-crop U.S. soybeans, plus another 3.8 million tons booked to "unknown destinations," which in this trade usually means Chinese state-owned buyers who have not declared yet. USDA then announced a 26.2-million-bushel flash sale to China on August 21, one of the larger single-day sales in years.

Why it is still not 2017

Every ton of the 2025 commitment that had arrived by May was imported by Beijing-based state-owned firms. The private crushers in Shandong and Jiangsu, the ones who buy on price, are buying from Brazil and Argentina, which shipped 26.4 million tons to China by May and record volumes from June through August.

The reason is simple: China still has a 10 percent retaliatory tariff on U.S. soybeans, and U.S. offers are running 50 to 60 cents a bushel above South American origins. The state buyers pay that difference because the government told them to. The private ones do not.

So the structure is: government-to-government commitments fill a floor, the commercial market goes elsewhere, and from September through March last year China took less than 30 percent of U.S. soybean exports, about half its historic share.

Tennessee Soybean Promotion Council's Stefan Maupin: "There have been some positive movements, but we are definitely not where we were in years past."

What to do with it

The 25-million-ton commitment is real money and it is showing up in the export sales report. It is also a political number, and political numbers get renegotiated. A marketing plan that assumes Chinese demand holds through 2028 is a plan that assumes the trade relationship does.

With November beans above $13 on a crop that may be the smallest in three years, the rally is being driven by U.S. supply first. If the WASDE confirms a yield near 52.5, that leg holds on its own for a while. But a $13 handle on new-crop beans in September is a price that, in most years, the market gives you once. Selling some is not a bet against China; it is a bet that you would like to be paid.