Soybeans setting pods in central Iowa August 4, 2025. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said Tuesday he is hopeful the Trump administration will come up with a plan to “improve morale among farmers” in response to the apparent loss of the Chinese soybean export market. 

China is historically the largest foreign buyer of U.S. soybeans, but after leveraging retaliatory tariffs in response to those imposed by President Donald Trump, the country has turned elsewhere for its soybean shipments this year. 

According to reporting from Reuters, China bought roughly 1.3 million tons of soybeans from Argentina. The same week, the Trump administration announced a $20 billion bailout deal with Argentina. 

Grassley, during a call with reporters Tuesday, reiterated his previously expressed “resentment” at the Argentinian bail-out that coincided with the country lowering its export taxes and China swooping into make a deal.

“You can’t blame China for jumping in to save their own money and get their own products cheaper,” Grassley said. 

The Iowa Republican said he has been in conversation with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins about the situation and said she is working on a solution to help farmers “without getting money from Congress.”

Grassley said Rollins and the president have mentioned using money from U.S. imposed tariffs to support U.S. soybean farmers, but he said “nothing’s put together yet.” 

Grassley said the challenges associated with the loss of market for soybean farmers are “reminiscent” of farmer struggles during the farm crisis of the 1980s. 

Iowa Soybean Association President Tom Adam said in an article published by the association that the federal government’s “lifeline to Argentina” was “poorly timed and inexcusable.” 

“This is especially true considering the much-publicized financial pain U.S. ag has been experiencing due to an ongoing trade war with our country’s most reliable and significant purchasers of soybeans,” Adam said in the article. “With harvest underway in Iowa and throughout key soybean growing regions around the country, now is the time for making U.S. soybean sales, not empowering our competitors.” 

Iowa Soybean Association’s senior director of market development, Grant Kimberly, said the amount of beans China will be able to purchase from Argentina could be enough to “sustain its needs for soy” until Brazil harvests its soybean crop in January.

China first turned to Brazil for soybeans during the trade wars of Trump’s first term in office. The trade war in 2018 caused serious market loss for U.S. farmers and resulted in more than $23 billion paid to farmers, from the federal government, for relief. 

Grassley said the best thing the president can do for U.S. farmers is to reach a settlement “very quickly” with China.

“I want the bottom line to be that farmers don’t want to get money from the federal treasury, they want to get it from the market,” Grassley said. 

Grassley criticizes Dems as shutdown appears imminent

Congressional Democrats are standing firm on a series of demands, that Republicans disagree with, on the stopgap spending bill that would prevent a government shutdown. 

Grassley said instead of passing the “clean” funding bill Republicans proposed that is “nearly identical” to one that passed six months ago, Democrats are instead appeasing “the radical activists in their base.” 

Midnight federal shutdown edges closer as US Senate fails to agree on spending bills

“Democrats voted 13 times for a clean, short term funding bill under President Biden,” Grassley said. “The only difference I see now is Democrats see a Republican in the White House.”

If the Senate does not pass a bill by midnight on Tuesday, the government will shut down and hundreds of thousands of government employees will be furloughed.  

Grassley said the holdup is that Democrats want to attach a “massive partisan spending bill” that will cost taxpayers “more than $1 trillion.” 

According to reporting from States Newsroom’s D.C. Bureau, Democrats’ bill accounts for rising health care costs they assert have occurred from the Republican sponsored tax and spending cuts law referred to as the “one big beautiful bill.” 

“You’ve heard me say before, government is a service to the people,” Grassley said. “How can you serve the people if government is shut down? It costs money to shut government down, it costs money to open the government back up again. I hope my Democrat colleagues will drop their partisan proposal and work with Republicans to keep government open.”

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