President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to block imports of Chinese cooking oil in retaliation for China’s apparent blockade of soybeans from the United States.
The cooking oil threat was serious enough to make China complain about the dangers of trade wars, without offering much of an explanation for its own actions against the U.S. soybean market.
China was the world’s largest importer of American soybeans until this year, when imports began to trail off amid rising trade tensions. China purchased almost $12.8 billion in American soybeans in 2024.
American soybeans grew considerably more expensive after China hit them with retaliatory tariffs, and Chinese importers began seeking alternate supplies from South America. According to trade data cited by CNBC on Tuesday, China stopped buying American soybeans altogether in May.
Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he viewed China “purposefully not buying our soybeans, and causing difficulty for our soybean farmers” as an “economically hostile act.”
“We are considering terminating business with China having to do with cooking oil, and other elements of trade, as retribution,” Trump said. “As an example, we can easily produce cooking oil ourselves; we don’t need to purchase it from China.”
CNBC noted the politics of the soybean crisis could become awkward for Trump because one of China’s major alternative suppliers is Argentina, whose president, Javier Milei, is an important Trump ally. The U.S. Treasury Department announced a $20 billion currency swap this week to stabilize the Argentine economy.
Trump’s cooking oil threat seems to have rattled the Chinese, who exported a record $1.1 billion worth of the product to America in 2024. Imports have declined substantially since then due to U.S. tariffs and due to China ending some advantageous tax rebates for its export companies.
“Tariff and trade wars have no winners and do not serve any party’s interest. The two sides need to address relevant issues through consultation on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday in response to a question about Trump’s threat.
China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday brought forth a stable of “Chinese experts” to inveigh against Trump for making “unreasonable threats” that would surely end up hurting American farmers more than their Chinese counterparts.
“Amid mounting domestic pressure, the U.S. government keeps ratcheting up threats of trade restrictions against China. However, it is exactly the U.S. government’s such unreasonable measures, especially steep tariffs, that have caused losses on U.S. farms,” said China Association of Trade senior research fellow Li Yong.
Li’s association said Trump’s tariffs have made American soybeans 20 percent more expensive than the alternative South American suppliers to which China has turned.
Analyst Ma Wenfeng of the Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultancy claimed China would have little trouble finding alternate customers for its cooking oil if Trump cuts off American purchases, as the oil can be used to “produce renewable diesel.”
The Chinese Commerce Ministry urged the U.S. to “correct its wrongdoings as soon as possible, demonstrate sincerity in trade talks, work with China in the same direction,” and take various other measures to resolve the trade dispute, without suggesting any concessions China might offer.
China’s ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, likewise told the U.S. to “return to reason” and “stop applying maximum pressure” on Tuesday.
Speaking at an annual dinner event held by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Xie said a trade war “will serve no one’s interest in the end.”
“China does not want to fight such a war, but neither will we sit idly by when our rights and interests are harmed, and the international economic and trade rules as well as the multilateral trading system are undermined, he said.
The Global Times said on Thursday that the international community was eager to get its hands on a new volume of excerpts from dictator Xi Jinping’s speeches and monographs, because the book would supposedly offer valuable insights into dealing with the world’s rising hyperpower, and advice on how to duplicate its economic success.
“The origins of many of the answers the Chinese government has found can be traced in this work,” proclaimed Christina Werum-Wang, who described Xi’s book as a bridge between China and the rest of the world.
Werum-Wang is the director of the Frankfurt Confucius Institute, so she is not exactly an unbiased reviewer. The article ended on something of a sad trombone note, as the Global Times described only a few people lingering after the launch event to page through Xi’s dense volume of Communist thought.
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