China has stopped buying liquefied natural gas from the United States after imposing a 15 per cent tariff on these supplies on February 10, The New York Times writes.
The publication writes that ship tracking data shows that Beijing continues to decouple from the U.S. economy, and Chinese customs data shows that LNG imports from the U.S. had already fallen to a low from November to January. Instead, China has expanded purchases from Russia, which last year supplied China with four times as much LNG as the United States.
Only two liquefied natural gas cargo ships from the United States were on their way to China when Beijing imposed tariffs on the U.S. fossil fuel in response to President Trump’s first round of 10 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods. According to Belgian energy company Kpler, one ship arrived in China before the tariffs took effect and unloaded its cargo, while another headed to Bangladesh to avoid the tariffs.
As the NYT writes, the United States accounted for just 3 per cent of China’s natural gas imports last year. Now those purchases may stop completely because of the trade war.
Europe’s boycott of natural gas from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 means that Russian gas is sold at a very low price, while European companies pay significantly more for gas from other countries, including the United States. So Chinese power companies have been able to buy a lot of gas at a low price from Russia instead of the US.
Chinese power companies have been big buyers of liquefied natural gas in the U.S., but even before the tariff went into effect, they were shipping quite a bit of that fuel to China. Instead, Chinese companies were shipping their purchases from U.S. ports for sale to Europe.
On 9 April, US President Donald Trump attributed his decision to once again sharply raise tariffs to “the disrespect that China is showing to global markets. After several rounds, the duty hikes reached 145 per cent.
On 11 April, China announced another import duty increase on US goods, this time to 125%