U.S. and Chinese readouts on the May 14-15 Trump-Xi summit in Beijing agree that agricultural trade between the two countries is important and should be revived, but their descriptions differ on what was agreed at the meeting.
On May 17, The White House released a fact sheet that featured a commitment by China to purchase $17 billion worth of U.S. agricultural products annually through 2028 in addition to the soybean purchase commitment made in October 2025. The fact sheet also said China agreed to renew expired listings of U.S. beef exporters and pledged to resume imports of U.S. poultry products from U.S. States free of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said soybeans "are all taken care of" by the October purchase agreement, although China has never acknowledged it, China's first round of 12 million tons of soybean purchases was not completed by December 2025 as originally promised, and Successful Farming said "markets are awaiting clarity" on how the pledge will be fulfilled.
On May 20, China's Ministry of Commerce posted a Q&A with a senior official about the Beijing meeting that featured similar top line items--including an emphasis on agricultural measures--but it did not mention any agricultural purchase commitments. Instead, the China readout demanded resolution of U.S. nontariff barriers to Chinese agricultural products and a more nuanced discussion of U.S. beef exporter registrations. An English summary in China's Global Times on the same day omits details.
The Chinese official cited four U.S. measures against Chinese agricultural products that China has been fighting to eliminate for years. The Chinese readout called for
- lifting U.S. FDA's automatic detention of Chinese dairy products that has been in place since China's 2008 melamine adulteration scandal;
- accepting trial U.S. imports of Chinese bonsai trees;
- lifting automatic detention of three categories of Chinese fish and shellfish;
- recognizing China's Shandong Province as a region free of highly pathogenic avian influenza;
- expedited review of applications to remove Chinese enterprises from U.S. import alert "red lists"
The Chinese commerce ministry explained that its reinstatement of U.S. beef exporters is not as cut-and-dried as the U.S. fact sheet suggests. China's failure to renew 400 U.S. beef exporter qualifications was due to worries about risk of cross-species transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza (to beef?), according to the commerce official. This "risk" may be inspired by recent discoveries of HPAI transmission to U.S. dairy cattle and raw milk, but FDA found no evidence of transmission in pasteurized milk, and a cursory look at the studies shows no mention of beef contamination risk. The official acknowledged that the U.S. side had submitted scientific documentation on multiple occasions to satisfy their concerns, but only now have Chinese officials decided that the U.S. met their requirements. Additionally, Chinese officials are examining corrective actions by beef exporters suspended due to "excessive levels of drug residues," and Chinese technical experts will travel to the U.S. for on-site inspections.
This blog previously documented a surge in Chinese customs rejections of U.S. beef last year, many of them citing presence of melengestrol acetate, progesterone and ractopamine, substances banned inby China in animal production. Chin's rejections of U.S. beef were down in the first 3 months of 2026.
The Chinese readout did not mention imports of U.S. poultry, soybeans, corn or any other commodity.
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