China behind on purchase commitments, but Q4 looks promising

As of April, China’s purchases from the U.S. are in the range of $20 billion dollars and ag purchases are well below their commitment.

The USDA says that more buys will happen over the next few months. For the week ending June 4th, China bought 0 metric tons of corn, but they did buy almost 67,000 metric tons of sorghum, over 850,000 metric tons of soybeans, and 63 thousand metric tons of wheat. These commodities are all lagging behind the five year average purchases.

China did not buy any beef, but they did purchase over 370,000 running bales of cotton and 2,600 metric tons of pork showed up on the weekly ledger. These products have trended at or above the five year average.

As the Phase One Agreement is based on the calendar year, many purchases could happen in the fourth quarter.