Shaky US farmers put Syngenta in trade crossfire

Corteva

20/04/2026 20:40

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Refiles to say “Communist” not “Community” in paragraph nine.

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

NEW YORK, April 22 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Syngenta’s coveted place in the food chain now leaves it vulnerable. The Chinese-owned seeds and pesticides producer is preparing an initial public offering just as Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping cue up a highly anticipated summit next month to discuss trade, technology and more. With U.S. farmers increasingly frustrated by economic hardships, the "Art of the Deal" author will be under pressure to use any negotiating leverage he can to assist the important heartland constituency.

It's no exaggeration to say the 2017 acquisition of Switzerland-based Syngenta by state-backed China National Chemical Corp, or ChemChina, was one of the most influential transactions of the last quarter century. At $43 billion, it marks the biggest overseas takeover by a Chinese company. Beijing, scarred by the country's historical famines, secured control over agricultural know-how to help improve domestic crop yields and reduce dependence on imported food. It also became a dominant supplier to the rest of the planet in an industry with only a few big competitors.

Although color-changing melons and insect-resistant corn don't necessarily evoke high technology the way AI-powered robots do, farmers and policymakers worldwide depend on Syngenta's crop-related inventions and advances. Moreover, at a time when governments increasingly regard resources through a protectionist lens, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has championed the industry's mantra: "Food security is national security." This combination of cutting-edge science and national competitiveness puts the company, led by Jeff Rowe since 2024, in a sticky position as the United States and China ratchet up their battle for international supremacy.

Growth has vexed Syngenta, too. Widely dispersed manufacturing capabilities helped revenue surge during the pandemic, but it has dropped 15% since 2022, to $28 billion. Higher interest rates and severe weather are partly to blame, along with corporate disposals. Its EBITDA margin also dipped below 16%. Rival Corteva CTVA.N, after a campaign by pushy investor Starboard Value, kept its top line flat at about $17.5 billion and improved profitability by some 3 percentage points to more than 22%. Using the 12 times multiple of 2025 EBITDA at which it trades, the Syngenta enterprise would be worth about $53 billion, including net debt.

Its strategic value is even higher, which exposes it to tension between the world's two biggest economic superpowers. Although Trump has toned down his anti-China rhetoric lately and indicated that he wants next month's meeting with Xi to be non-adversarial, agriculture will be high on the list of discussion topics.

Typically stoic American farmers are now voicing their concerns. Trump's decision to join Israel in attacking Iran has sent the prices of diesel fuel, used in tractors, and fertilizer soaring. His strict immigration protocols are making it harder to find enough workers. These strains add to the steep drop in soybean exports to China since 2022. After running agricultural trade surpluses for years, the United States suffered a record $44 billion deficit last year. The administration's decision to bail out Argentina, whose soybean sales to China have jumped and where Syngenta just debuted its latest weedkiller, also irked U.S. growers.

More than 50 organizations — representing U.S. cotton, sugar, soybean and other interests — asked for financial "relief" in a March letter to Trump, spelling out the vast range of suffering they face. "This combination of sustained market pressures, weather-related challenges and geopolitical uncertainty poses a serious threat to the upcoming growing season and the long-term viability of U.S. agriculture," they wrote.

China fulfilled the pledge it made last October to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans, to be shipped by May, but there are mounting concerns it will not follow through on a commitment of 25 million annually after the Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs in February. Even that sum would be lower than the 10-year average. Comparable crops from Brazil and Argentina are also cheaper.

With the commander-in-chief's biggest cudgel blunted, he may need to drum up other forms of negotiating power. Syngenta already has been used as a political punching bag. A group of U.S. legislators in February questioned ties between a century-old youth leadership organization with the "Chinese Communist Party-controlled Syngenta." Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen said he rejected a meeting with the company and suggested instead that it leave the state, while Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders demonized Syngenta's ownership when she forced it to sell a tiny plot of state land used to test seeds.

    Rollins,
    the head of U.S. agricultural policy, noted separately last year that farms "are weapons that can be turned against us" when she
    unveiled
     her National Farm Security Action Plan. Its
    goals
     include enhancing "supply chain resilience."

Trump already invokes national security for everything from the White House ballroom to wind farms, and considers meddling in corporate matters an acceptable policy tool. He intervened in U.S. Steel's $15 billion sale to Japan's Nippon Steel, securing some control over the merged outfit with an unprecedented presidential "golden share." A more relevant example, perhaps, is his extraction of TikTok's U.S. business from China's ByteDance, which built the app into a powerhouse on the back of its 2017 acquisition of U.S.-based Musical.ly.

Such precedents make it hard to rule out the idea of Trump using Syngenta as a bargaining chip. Although ChemChina's deal controversially cleared a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which theoretically shields it from further scrutiny, such legal impediments rarely deter the president. It leaves open the possibility he might press for the U.S. business to be carved out or for an outright sale of the company if a more pragmatic approach to talks fails to secure what he considers a good deal for farmers. Squeezing out smaller concessions, such as ChemChina — which merged with rival Sinochem in 2021 — offloading a bigger slice of its shares in an IPO, is another possiblity.

Either way, being unwittingly drafted into the trade war would be an unwelcome development for Syngenta and its Chinese parent. There are many good reasons for them to be left out of any contentious trade talks. For one thing, about 8% of its 50,000-person workforce is in the United States. U.S. farmers also have a limited choice of suppliers. If China were to turn the tables on Trump and use Syngenta as leverage itself, it would only make diplomatic matters worse and position the company more squarely in the crossfire.

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Syngenta sales have been slipping https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRV-BRV/lbpgyzazepq/chart.png

Crop rotation: US agri-trade deficit grows to record high https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRV-BRV/zjvqmobdkvx/chart.png

Growing pains: US farmers struggle to break even https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BRV-BRV/zdvxgkzjqpx/chart.png

(Editing by Una Galani; Production by Pranav Kiran)

((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on GOLDFARB/jeffrey.goldfarb@thomsonreuters.com))