China Expected To Purchase More American Products This Fiscal Year

This fiscal year China will likely buy more American Ag products than this last fiscal year, however, over the past couple of months, products bound for China have slowed a little bit, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. USDA Chief Economist, Rob Johansson, said that’s reflected in their latest trade projections for this fiscal year’s Chinese purchases of US Ag product.

When looking at February's dollar amounts, "we had forecast them at $14 billion from the U.S, up from $10 billion in fiscal 2019," Rippey said. "And we have them at $13 billion now, so up from last year but down one billion dollars from February"

But these projections, Johansson noted, are for fiscal year 2020 which began October 1st, 2019, and ends September 30th of this year. So he said you really cannot connect those projections to the Phase One trade agreement commitments which are on a calendar year basis.