A commodity market analyst says China has made its first purchase of U.S. soybeans in the current marketing year.
Allendale’s Greg McBride says the sale comes ahead of President Trump’s meeting with China’s president on Thursday.
“We hear they bought three cargoes at 180,000 metric tons,” he said. “It’s token business and more of a goodwill purchase as we go into this meeting.”
He tells Brownfield he believes it’s a gesture from Chinese leadership to get the meeting started on the right foot.
“What does this mean for us? What are we going to get out of it? Is it more having a meeting to set up when the next meeting is, or is it actually a deal where we can have a tangible number? We need a specific number – whether that’s dollars, bushels, or metric tons – of soybeans that are going to be sold.”
McBride says soybean futures were lower on the export news overnight.
“The optimism has been all earlier this week,” he said. “We had roughly a 50 cent move to start the week. As of hearing about these sales this morning, we actually went from about four or five cents lower to nine cents lower in the bean market.”
He says the shipments are scheduled for delivery later this year.
