Times are Changing

Over the past 25 years or so, a subtle shift has occurred in the global agricultural market. Foreign direct influence in South American countries has provided the capital and consumer base needed to jump-start the production of soybeans, cattle, and corn. Take, for example, Brazil, which, alongside U.S. farmers, has accounted for about 80% of the global soybean sales. The other side of the triangle, China imports about 60% of total soybean sales every year and used to be one of the largest buyers of American-grown soybeans. In 2013, Brazil surpassed domestic soybean production, and since then, due to political unrest, BRICS partnerships, and more favorable growing conditions, the country has continued to gain the lead.

In 2018, then-President Trump began imposing tariffs on China, citing intellectual theft and unfair trade practices, which started a trade war that has continued to this day. This led to a nearly 44% decrease in American soybean exports to China, and since then, China’s soybean purchases from the U.S. have never recovered to pre-2018 levels.

For years, China has followed a strict pattern when creating purchase orders for soybeans, the American Soybean Association wrote:

“China effectively halts its U.S. soybean orders as soon as Brazil’s harvest comes online in February. After which point, China purchases soybeans exclusively from Brazilian originators until Brazil runs out of exportable soybeans around September, if the country faces logistics challenges, or if a cheaper U.S. crop hits the market earlier than usual.” - Soybeans Without a Buyer: The Export Gap Hurting U.S. Farms

So, how are orders shaping up now that the American harvest is underway and is expected to wrap up in early November? According to the most recent FDA report, as of September 18, 2025, China has placed exactly zero orders. For context, at this point last year, Chinese buyers had already locked in 6.5 million metric tons.

 
 
SOYBEANS                                            MARKETING YEAR 09/01 - 08/31
   OUTSTANDING EXPORT SALES AND EXPORTS BY COUNTRY, REGION AND MARKETING YEAR
1000 METRIC TONS       AS OF September 18 2025
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      :      CURRENT MARKETING YEAR         :NEXT MARKETING YEAR
                       ---------------------------------------------------------
                      :OUTSTANDING SALES:ACCUMULATED EXPORTS: OUTSTANDING SALES 
                       ---------------------------------------------------------
   DESTINATION        :THIS WEEK: YR AGO:THIS WEEK: YR AGO  :SECOND YR: 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      :
CHINA                 :     0.0   6513.2       0.0    299.1        0.0       0.0

Soy China

In June 2025, the USDA’s Brazilian office released a report outlining a deepening partnership between Brazil and China, branded as the Soy China initiative. The move marks yet another Chinese advance into South America’s sphere of influence. Under the plan, Beijing will allocate new funds to Brazil to enhance health and environmental standards for soybean production to Chinese specifications, and, most significantly, establish a direct sales pipeline from Brazilian growers to the Chinese mainland.

“this production line could boost Brazilian soybean market dominance while directly challenging U.S. exports.” - USDA Assessment of Soy China Initiative in Brazil

The Soy China initiative is an agricultural program and a long-term geopolitical maneuver. By strengthening Brazil’s production capacity and tying it directly to Chinese demand, the partnership threatens to undercut already dwindling U.S. influence in both trade negotiations and global soybean pricing.

Soybean Sell-Out

A sneaky AP photographer was able to snap a picture of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s phone, in which he was reading a text from U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.

“the Argentine’s are removing their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China, at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us.” - Brooke Rollins in text to Scott Bessent

The deal came as a backstab to American soybean farmers, so quickly after Bessent and Trump finalized a $20 billion currency swap line to assist Argentine President Javier Milei, who is seeking to stay in power since elections begin this October, and the Argentine economy is in free fall.

Bailout

In the face of the soybean fiasco, our deal-maker-in-chief has been strangely quiet, a rare silence that makes sense once you consider how heavily U.S. tariffs have distorted the export market. The administration itself avoids saying the obvious: tariffs function as import taxes. Still, Trump prefers to emphasize a different story. He regularly touts the amount of money these tariffs have supposedly generated, sidestepping the cost of trade. And just recently, in a Truth Social post, he promised relief for the very farmers who were hit hardest by those same policies.

We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers. - Trump on Truth Social

It always feels good, in that twisted Washington sense, to watch money purposefully stripped from U.S. citizens through a senseless trade war with half the globe, only to be funneled right back into subsidies for the very farmers who demanded the war in the first place. The circle completes itself: tariffs drain the market, farmers cry foul, and taxpayer dollars are used to patch the wounds. All the while, the administration and its voters clap like seals and call it a victory.

In the end, the soybean saga isn’t just about tariffs, trade wars, or foreign influence; it displays the self-inflicted wounds of an ill-informed voter. The same farmers who cheered for tariffs are now lining up for subsidies, trapped in a cycle of pain they voted for. China buys from Brazil, Argentina cuts deals after pilfering our coffers, and the U.S. government raids its own citizens’ pockets to paper over the losses. Call it loyalty, call it short-sightedness (call it a cult), but the truth is stark: Republican farmers voted for their own demise, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

While there is no recorded first instance of a message being scribed onto munitions, I would wager that the practice has existed for as long as bullets, bombs, arrows, and grenades have been in use. It is part of human nature to express our feelings through writing, and the most human of these feelings is anger. Quite the match made in heaven.

As of late, a worrying pattern has emerged in the “American political violence scene”, which seemed to start with the internet’s favorite (alleged) assassin. After the shooting in New York City that forcefully extracted the soul of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, three spent cartridges were located on the scene, emblazoned with the words “delay”, “deny”, and “depose.” This is in reference to similar phrases used by the insurance industry to deny care, and clearly stated the shooter’s goals in a simple three words. I know many of you are asking, “three words, that’s way too many, can we cut it down at all?” The answer, dear reader, is no, actually, as the next widely publicized killing that utilized the old sharpie on a spent round trick was the killing of former Toilet Paper USA founder, Charlie “Prove me wrong“ Kirk. Now, we have the assassin in custody, Tyler Robinson, and, in traditional fashion, he is an enigma of immense proportions. Robinson might be the most average person ever, raised in a deeply republican household in Utah, surrounded by guns his entire life, and radicalized at his electrician apprenticeship. We might never know how he became so violent, but we do know that he was a massive loser, and one thing losers LOVE to do is copy.

So the crack shot Mormon put his best engraving work into what motivates him most, that just happened to be the most shallow internet memes possible, I will admit, watching the Governor of Utah try and say “Notices, bulges, OwO what’s this?” might make up for the fact that Kirk died in the first ever Reddit assassination. But even before the Utah Valley shooting, the United States was rocked with another tragedy in Minneapolis, the 23-year-old attacker targeted a catholic school (the same school they had attended as a child and practiced as an adult) and had an unhealthy obsession with mass shooters, because, of course, they did. Now, attentive readers might see a connection to the two cases discussed so far, and our new individual, so what did they write?

You guessed it, more internet gibberish. So, where are we heading as a nation, Years of Lead anyone? All these little internet freaks are dragging us in one direction, and after such a short jaunt, we have arrived at our final destination. Joshua Jahn was another nobody, apparently radicalized by his love of Reddit, marijuana, and his deep red hometown of Allen, Texas. This deeply troubled individual climbed onto a roof overlooking an ICE facility and either tried to shoot agents working at the facility and missed or had so much hate in his heart that he shot three detainees. Either way, the motive of the shooter is incomprehensible; the background that we know amounts to never graduating from college, but spending four years on and off at Collins College, never holding down a job for more than a year, and the only prior criminal mischief was marijuana possession. So obviously, this criminal genius would write some stupid rhetoric on his bullets, and he did. “ANTI-ICE” in sloppy blue marker on one of the unspent cartridges, posted by our dear FBI director, minutes after reports of the shooting. Now I am not one for conspiracies, but if I were a very literal FBI agent, and my immediate boss told me to “put some anti-ICE messaging on the round,” even I don’t think I would be stupid enough to write “ANTI-ICE.” It is close enough to parody that it almost makes sense that Jahn wrote it.

It is obvious that our current news apparatus is woefully unprepared for the insanity of doomer internet bad actors. For those who haven’t spent an unhealthy amount of time in a game, hearing anchors talk about 6,000 hours in Rust as a motive is going to get old fast. Calling Tyler Robinson a furry solely because of a message he wrote on a bullet, which could either be joking about the furry culture online, as an insider, an outsider, or even completely unaware of any connection to the folks that dress up as dogs. Everything is wrapped in multiple layers of irony, and attempting to unravel them is impossible. Every group online has its own jokes, co-opted from other communities, the meaning changed and shifted, and Fox News, CNN, and NBC’s reporting is drawing many parallels with the video game moral panic following the Columbine shooting.

In the end, the messages scrawled onto bullets and broadcast online are less about a single coherent ideology and more about a desperate need for attention in a world addicted to spectacle. We may never truly know what drove Robinson to shoot Kirk or Jahn to fire upon ICE detainees, but it is good at distracting us from the real danger of the shift towards violence in the US, and as long as we are distracted, no work will be put towards figuring out how to pull these young white men back from the brink, before its too late.

Anti-Science at the CDC

On September 22, the American public received one of the most consequential press briefings on health in the last 25 years. But first, how did we get to this point. It all started when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was selected by Trump for the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services, assumedly as payment for dropping out of the 2024 presidential election, many were excited about his "fresh" outlook on modern health and unique takes on controversial topics like Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in combination with vaccines. While most Republicans had little issue with his confirmation, one standout senator, Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, joined the Democrats in opposing the confirmation. McConnell, who was diagnosed with Polio at the age of 2 in 1944, has seen firsthand how modern vaccines can save lives, and stated as much when he voted against RFK Jr. In a statement, McConnell said "[RFK Jr.] failed to prove he is the best possible person," citing his stance on vaccines, such as his public opposition of Polio and MMR vaccines.

During his tenure, RFK Jr. has fired multiple key leaders at the CDC, including former director Susan Monarez and all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). ACIP members were then hand picked by RFK Jr. now numbering at 12 members, with notable figures such as Retsef Levi, a professor at MIT with the claim to fame of his criticism of COVID vaccines and Robert Malone, a physician and biochemist who worked on mRNA technology, who similarly to Levi, spread blatant misinformation about the safety of Covid vaccines during the pandemic. Monarez has publicly stated that she was fired for disapproving of the new ACIP members. In addition, the Trump administration has cancelled upwards of $500 million in research for mRNA vaccines. Kennedy cited the unsafe and ineffective COVID-19 vaccine and claimed that mRNA contributed to antigenic shift, which "allowed HHS to determine that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses."

The destruction of research into ASD and the selection of anti-science thinkers into decision-making roles paints a broader picture of the dismantling of critical safety nets for the American public in terms of health, destroying robust protections against viruses/pandemics, and a future of vaccine deniers in charge of our public health. It also showcases an anti-science coalition forming under and with the express support of the Trump administration, highlighting the urgent need to promote evidence-based policies and rely on scientific consensus.

War is Declared

President Trump started the press release by stumbling over the pronunciation of all of his ire, failing three times to correctly say acetaminophen, after giving up he began a long tirade about Tylenol, stating that he and RFK Jr. know more about ASD than scientists because modern science doesn't release its findings. Trump said, "The meteoric rise in autism is among the most alarming public health developments in history," which begs the question, what about ASD is alarming? In the same breath, he announced that ASD used to manifest at rates closer to 1/20,000 and 18 years ago, 1/10,000. Trump maligned the fact that today, the rate is at 1/31, and for "boys in California, it's 1/12." The administration believes that there is an artificial increase in ASD due to prenatal acetaminophen usage, citing multiple studies, one being a Lit Review by Harvard that analyzed 46 other studies that investigated the "potential link between prenatal acetaminophen use and subsequent neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD)," this study found that the drug was vital for treating pain and fever during pregnancy, but that pregnant women should limit the use of acetaminophen to only when its medically necessary. Side note, shouldn’t medicine only be taken when its medically necessary already? Another study conducted by Boston University analyzed 996 mother-infant dyads. The study attempted to find "prospective associations between cord plasma acetaminophen metabolites and physician-diagnosed ADHD, ASD, both ADHD and ASD, and developmental disabilities (DDs) in childhood." The conclusion of this study found consistent associations between acetaminophen and NDDs. The third study, mentioned by Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner, suggested that treating fever can prolong symptoms, and potentially letting the fever run its course would be a more natural and healthy process. In attempting to find the Johns Hopkins study cited, no public release of these findings was available.

Vaccines, Mercury and Wakefield 2.0

While the star of the show was Tylenol, who, as of writing, has regained the losses in share price due to unsubstantiated claims made by the Trump administration, Trump still spent time sowing disinformation about vaccines, specifically vaccine scheduling for infants. Trump repeatedly told listeners to 'spread out shots over 5 time periods or 4' and that parents needed to be aware of all the 'fluids' that are injected by doctors into their kids' bodies. The claim that the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine is unsafe together and that doctors should administer them separately pushes a disproved theory from 1998 that MMR vaccines had connections with ASD. The scientific methodology used within the study was fabricated by its head researcher, Andrew Wakefield, in its entirety and eventually retracted by its publisher, so it is dangerous for the current President to parrot harmful rhetoric on completely safe vaccines that go on to save millions of lives. Trump also suggested that vaccines contain chemicals like mercury and aluminum, that parents should delay the hepatitis B vaccine until the child is 12, and that kids are pumped full of 80 different vaccines. As of September 17, 2025, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a highly respected professional association of pediatricians, provides a recommended list of vaccines for those under 18, which contains 30 different entries, including five combination vaccines that replace individual shots.

Everything can't be an emergency

Trump noted during his time with the microphone that the 'autism epidemic' was one of the most critical health crises of the time, and for that reason, he will be putting most of the HHS and CDC into the prevention and research of ASD. Unfortunately, that is the 4th 'crisis' that Trump has taken a liking to during his administration. News segments and radio shows are in abundance with talks of the 'migrant crisis,' in which billions of dollars are allocated to ICE to ensure the end of illegal immigration, and 'leftist terrorists' are labeled a crisis, even though right-wing actors perform a majority of domestic political attacks. This unbalanced approach to crises raises the question of what should actually be considered an emergency and calls for a more logical categorization of our problems. It is time to look at what is considered worse: a child on the spectrum or a child suffering from a preventable disease.

Conflicting Reports

Following the announcement and even ahead of it, doctors, medical professionals, and researchers have taken to social media and their local commentary columns to express dismay with the administration's hard line on ASD and Tylenol. One medical professional, Dr. Allen Frances, who was the leader in charge of the American Psychiatric Association's task force that updated ASD criteria for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-4), claimed that RFK Jr. was incorrect with his hypothesis that vaccines or environmental factors have led to the 60 times the rates from 30 years ago. Dr. Frances, in a guest commentary article with the New York Times, stated that the increased rate of ASD diagnoses was due to the criteria change from DSM-3 to DSM-4. Dr. Frances wrote, "In the third edition of the DSM, published in 1980, autism was tightly defined and considered extremely rare. Criteria for the diagnosis required a very early onset (before age 3) of severe cognitive, interpersonal, emotional, and behavioral problems." Dr. Frances and his team changed the criteria to include cases much milder in severity than the DSM-3 standard, which they predicted would cause an increase in diagnoses. He fears that this increase would cause people to look towards conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine beliefs to understand the rate better.

The AAP put out an article to get ahead of the incorrect assertion at the press conference that autism and vaccines are linked in some way. In the article, the AAP shares many key facts about vaccines, and the evidence snapshot has links to reviewed studies on vaccine safety and effectiveness. Similarly, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) also quickly dispersed an article affirming the positive usage of acetaminophen during pregnancy, hoping to dispel any incorrect statements made by the Trump administration. Steven Fleischman, the President of ACOG, went on to say, "Suggestions that acetaminophen use in pregnancy causes autism are not only highly concerning to clinicians but also irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients, including those who may need to rely on this beneficial medicine during pregnancy."

The Autism Science Foundation (ASF) prides itself on their evidence-based autism research and providing resources for families. ASF quickly released a public announcement following the HHS live stream and the current Chief Science Officer at ASF Dr. Alycia Halladay said, “Any association between acetaminophen and autism is based on limited, conflicting, and inconsistent science and is premature,” followed by, ““This claim risks undermining public health while also misleading families who deserve clear, factual information. For many years, RFK and President Trump have shared their belief that vaccines cause autism, but this is also not supported by the science, which has shown no relationship between vaccines and autism.”

The most extensive study by sample size occurred in Sweden and analyzed 2.48 million. Early routine analyses showed slightly higher rates of autism and ADHD in kids whose moms used acetaminophen during pregnancy. Nevertheless, when the researchers compared siblings, where one was exposed in utero and the other was not, the differences disappeared. The study suggests that rather than prenatal acetaminophen being the driver for ASD, it instead points to different factors like genetics or home environment.

Ultimately

The announcement is dangerous because it not only pushes inaccurate medical information that has the potential to harm millions of women, but also because the studies that seek to unravel the cause of ASD and ADHD are shutting down in favor of anti-vax sentiment and anti-science ideals.