Prime Minister Mark Carney will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday afternoon in South Korea, the prime minister’s office said on Thursday.
China’s state-owned COFCO bought three U.S. soybean cargoes, two trade sources said, the country’s first purchases from this year’s U.S. harvest, shortly before a summit of leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
Canada offered tariff relief on some steel and aluminum products imported from the U.S. and China, a government document showed, in efforts to help domestic businesses battered by a trade war on two fronts.
China imported no soybeans from the U.S. in September, the first time since November 2018 that shipments fell to zero, while South American shipments surged from a year earlier, as buyers shunned American cargoes during the ongoing trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
Senior Canadian and Chinese officials discussed bilateral trade disputes involving canola and electric vehicles on Friday, Ottawa said, but gave no indication of any immediate breakthrough.
Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday said he expected to meet senior Chinese leaders soon but sidestepped a question about dropping tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for relief from Beijing’s duties on canola.