China calls for halt to US agriculture purchases, says report
Beijing has instructed its state-owned companies to halt imports of US agricultural products in response to President Trump's fresh tariff proposals on Chinese goods, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Citing people familiar with the situation, the report stated that privately run Chinese crushers that had received tariff waivers on American soybeans from the Chinese government had turned to buying Brazilian soybeans due to the continued trade uncertainty, with the waters having been further muddied by fresh economic threats from Washington.
China’s commerce ministry have not responded to requests for comment on the issue.
Despite the two economic giants set to return to the negotiating table, during the previous week, Trump proposed slapping 10% levies on another $300bn-worth of Chinese exports starting from 1 September in response to Chinese state-owned companies failure to purchase large enough amounts of US agricultural goods.
Trump claimed that at talks held at the G20 summit in Osaka in June, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping had promised that Chinese companies would ramp-up their purchases of goods such as US-grown soy beans .
Chinese state-owned companies had reportedly pledged to buy about 14.0m tonnes of US soy beans, of which only about 4.0m had not yet been shipped.