Chicago agricultural futures plunge amid renewed China-U.S. trade frictions in morning trade

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural commodities dropped sharply on Wednesday morning, following the news that the United States announced a list of tariffs on 200 billion U.S. dollars of Chinese goods Tuesday.

Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT).[File Photo: VCG]

The news produced considerable selling pressure at the CBOT. December corn was 5.25 cents lower, or 1.46 percent at 3.555 U.S. dollars per bushel as of 1530 GMT, September wheat was 9.25 cents lower, or 1.88 percent at 4.8275 dollars, November soybean was down 17.25 cents, or 1.98 percent at 8.5425 dollars.

Before that, investors were already worried about the impact of trade frictions between the world's top two economies after the United States began imposing a 25-percent additional tariff on Chinese products worth 34 billion U.S. dollars on Friday.

Accordingly, China retaliated on the same day by putting levies on an equal amount of U.S. goods including soybeans and other U.S. agricultural products.

China canceled purchases of U.S. soybeans for delivery in the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 marketing years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a latest report.