Commodities: Soybean futures jump as US-China trade dispute moves into new phase

Agriculture futures led to the upside at the end of the week as the US and China took another step in their confrontation over trade with a favourable tail-wind from US dollar weakness.

One minute past midnight in Washington D.C., 25% tariffs on $34bn-worth of Chinese goods kicked-in, with Beijing retaliating in kind shortly thereafter.

Levies on another $16bn-worth of Chinese goods were expected shortly and overnight the US President indicated that tariffs might end up covering over $500bn-worth of goods, which would mean practically all of the country's imports from China in 2017.

By the closing bell, the Bloomberg commodity index was 0.79% higher to 86.21, alongside a drop of 0.46% to 93.9630 for US dollar spot index.

Predictably, given Beijing's response to Washington's decision to move ahead with its tariffs, CBoT-traded soybean futures for November led gains, jumping 4.53% to $8.9450 a pound.

Following close behind, ICE-traded cotton#2 futures for December delivery added 3.04% to $0.8445 a pound, together with a 2.27% advance in September-dated CBoT corn, which rose 2.27% to $3.6025 a bushel.

In parallel, similarly-dated wheat futures climbed 1.93% to $5.1525 a bushel.

Despite the weak tone to trading in the Greenback, August gold on Comex slipped 0.24% to change hands at $1,255.80/oz..

Meanwhile, August WTI was ahead by 1.18% to $73.80 a barrel, even as September-dated Brent gave back 0.36% to $77.11 a barrel.