CHICAGO (Reuters) – China booked its biggest single-day U.S. corn purchase on record on Tuesday, its second massive deal for the yellow grain in less than a week, as it tries to meet its trade deal commitments even as tensions between Washington and Beijing rise.
China on Friday increased its corn and soybean import forecasts for the current season, as the country was expected to step up purchases from the United States.
The U.S. Agriculture Department said that private exporters reported that China bought 1.762 million tonnes of corn for shipment in the 2020/21 marketing year that begins on Sept 1.
The sale eclipsed the previous single-day record sale to China of 1.45 million tonnes of corn, set in December 1994, according to USDA data.
The deal follows a sale of 1.365 million tonnes to China, spread out over two marketing years, that the USDA announced on July 10.
China also booked deals to buy 129,000 tonnes of soybeans in the 2020/21 marketing year.
In the Phase 1 trade deal signed with the United States in January, Beijing agreed to buy $80 billion of U.S. agricultural products over the next two years.
(Reporting by Mark Weinraub; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
