China sharply reduced imports of many U.S. commodities last month, in some cases to zero, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies intensified.
Among the worst affected were purchases of liquefied natural gas and wheat, which both fell to nothing in March, according to Chinese customs data released on Sunday. The U.S. accounted for 17 percent of China’s wheat imports last year, and 5 percent of its LNG.
China imposed retaliatory duties of 10 percent to 15 percent on US energy products in February, and at a similar level on agricultural goods in March. China’s purchases are likely to dwindle even further after the trade war kicked into higher gear in early April, when both sides launched blanket tariffs of more than 100 percent on each other’s goods.
Other farm products saw steep declines in March. American cotton imports plunged 90 percent from the same month last year to just over 14,000 tons. Corn imports fell to less than 800 tons, the lowest level since February 2020.
Soybeans Rise
But soybeans bucked the trend, rising 12 percent to 2.44 million tons and building on heavy imports in the first two months of the year. The world’s top importer of soybeans is usually reliant on U.S. supplies until the South America harvest becomes available in China’s spring.
Elsewhere, purchases of U.S. liquefied petroleum gas, a petrochemical feedstock, slumped 36 percent to 1.02 million tons, while shipments of coal for steelmaking dropped 62 percent to 208,000 tons.
But crude oil imports rose 25 percent to 542,000 tons, in line with a big jump in overall imports, although the U.S. barely breaks the top 10 when it comes to ranking Chinese suppliers.
While metals weren’t subject to the new Chinese duties in March, flows of copper were affected by the Trump administration’s pledge to look at tariffing the metal, which has created a massive premium in US prices.
That contributed to a slump in Chinese imports of U.S. copper scrap, which more than halved to just over 22,000 tons, while cargoes of concentrate dropped 38 percent to about 19,000 tons.
© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.