Exclusive-US sorghum shipment heads to China after Trump-Xi meeting, grains council chairman says

By Casey Hall

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -A shipment of sorghum has been sent from the United States to China over the last week, Mark Wilson, chairman of the U.S. Grains and BioProducts Council, said on Thursday, the first known cargo following the recent meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

“I know after the meeting, one shipment of sorghum has been loaded and is coming over,” Wilson told Reuters on the sidelines of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, adding that he did not know the size of the shipment.

China, the top market for U.S. farmers and the world’s largest buyer of U.S. sorghum, has turned its vast appetite for U.S. crops into a powerful trade war bargaining chip.

China’s sorghum imports from the U.S. stood at 5.7 million metric tons last year, accounting for 66% of its imported purchases of the crop, which it mainly uses as a corn substitute for animal feed and producing the traditional drink baijiu.

After several rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs, Chinese buyers have largely avoided U.S. farm goods, including sorghum, and turned to other suppliers.

Investors on both sides of the Pacific welcomed the meeting last month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, which helped ease concerns that the world’s two largest economies might abandon efforts to resolve their trade disputes.

Beijing on Wednesday announced that from November 10 it would scrap tariffs of up to 15% that it had announced on March 4 for some U.S. agricultural goods. The move includes removing a 10% duty on U.S. sorghum.

However, China will retain the additional 10% levies on all U.S. goods introduced in response to Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” duties.

“I hope that we can get back to normal on sorghum because that’s the number one thing,” said Wilson. “Before, 95% of the export market from the U.S. came to China, so we need to get that going again. That’s what I hope happens.”

(Reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai; Writing by Ella Cao; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Sonali Paul and Joe Bavier)