The soybean market is feeling the pressure as a new marketing year began on September 1. Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist for StoneX, said the market has noticed the new year began with no sales to China on the books.

“Their lead negotiator was in the United States to negotiate last week, and went home without anything substantial to show for it. Both sides, the U.S. and Chinese negotiators, released statements that were very vanilla in nature. Both their statements said that things are complicated. That’s not wording that gives us a lot of hope or encouragement.”

While U.S. soy growers are urgently waiting for a resolution to reopen their biggest market, China isn’t sitting still.

“Meanwhile, what do we see? We see President Xi Jinping of China meeting with President Putin of Russia, meeting with Prime Minister Modi of India, and meeting with Brazil, stating that they’re going to gather together to fight against Trump and his tariffs. We see an appeals court that rules against the Trump tariffs. That increases the uncertainty. That emboldens those countries that are trying to fight against us and may unwind some of the trade deals we have that were good for agriculture.”

If the tariff case goes to the Supreme Court, Suderman said that it doesn’t necessarily mean the tariffs will be gone.

“There are still a couple of other avenues that the Trump administration can try for keeping the tariffs in place, but it does put them on a little bit shakier footing, and that’s exactly what some of these countries are holding out for and hoping is that the Trump administration loses on this and that they won’t have to give up anything. The whole purpose of this was to get these countries to lower their tariffs and the non-tariff restrictions, and so all of that may be out the window.”