South Korean media is reporting that increasing soybean imports from the US has come up as a topic during the trade negotiations between South Korea and the US.
The USDA projects that South Korea will import 1.16 million tons of soybeans in 2025/26. This is down 7% compared to imports in 2015/16. Given that South Korea is a relatively rich country and has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, it’s not a market that will see growth.
South Korea’s imports are typically split between the US and Brazil. Assuming trade negotiations result in South Korea buying soybean only from the US, that would only be about 500k tons per year in additional export demand.
US Agriculture Secretary Rollins also said there would be announcements next week related to US row crop exports and that the US has been in contact with countries in South America to crush US soybeans.
While there aren’t any other details at the moment, this would also be relatively odd. For example, China’s import taxes are set up in a way to incentivize the import of whole soybeans, rather than soybean meal and oil, in order to have that economic activity and those value-added processes happen within China.