Chinese buyers purchase US soybeans and pork - Reuters

Private Chinese firms purchased the most soybeans in over a year on Thursday, ahead of mid-level talks between US and Chinese trade officials scheduled for the following week.

According to Reuters, which cited two traders with knowledge of the deals, the firms purchased at least 10 cargoes or more than 600,000 tonnes of soybeans.

In remarks to the same newswire, Jack Scoville at Price Futures Group in Chicago said Beijing was demonstrating how things might be if some sort of trading relationship were to resume.

Earlier in the session, the US President, Donald Trump, had tweeted that it was expected that China would purchase large amounts of American agricultural products.

Bloomberg later reported, citing five persons familiar with the matter, that some of the President's advisers had discussed the possibility of inking an interim trade deal with Beijing that would delay and roll back some trade tariffs if Beijing agreed to commitments on intellectual property and on buying US agricultural goods.

That was later reportedly denied by a senior White House official, who told CNBC that Washington was "absolutely not" studying such a possibility.

Soybean futures on the CBoT paced a rally in soft commodities on the back of the news, with the December contract jumping by 2.24% to $8.955 per bushel.

Separately, the US Department of Agriculture reported that Beijing had bought 10,878 tonnes of American pork during the previous week, its biggest weekly purchase since May.