The United States has supplanted Brazil as the European Union’s top supplier of soybeans since a deal in July with President Donald Trump to avert a trade war, according to EU data seen by Reuters on Thursday (20 September).

In the 12 weeks to mid-September, US soybeans accounted for 52% of imports to the EU, rising 133 percent compared with the same period last year to 1.47 million tonnes. The United States had just 25% of the market in the same period of 2017.

Imports from Brazil dropped to a 40% share of the bloc’s roughly 35 million tonne annual import market for the animal feed staple.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pledged in a White House deal in late July that Europeans would buy more US soy as part of a package to avert threatened tariffs from Washington on US imports of EU cars.

Soybeans bring appeasement to EU-US trade war The EU’s pledge to import more soybeans from US farmers was the ‘dealmaker’ in the agreement between European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and US President Donald Trump to stop the dispute and open trade talks, EU sources told EURACTIV.

The EU executive has been collating frequent new import data to prove it is keeping its side of the bargain – even though the trends are largely the result of price movements in world markets. The EU had no previous barriers to US soybeans.

In June, China largely stopped buying US soybeans in retaliation for trade measures Trump targeted at Beijing — prompting European farmers to switch to buying cheaper US soy.

US and EU negotiators have begun discussions on how to free up some trade in what Washington wants to be a bigger deal that would cut the US deficit in merchandise trade.