How Many Times Can China Agree To Buy The Same Soybeans From The U.S.?

Heading into the summit in China, republicans had high hopes. Did anything happen?

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China has been agreeing to buy billions of dollars of soybean for years. The results were zero as noted above.

Dear Eric, the expectation was for China to buy twice as many Boeing airliners than announced. Boeing dropped on the news.

And let’s see how many actually happen.

China Summit Was a Success

However, I am pleased to report that we have a new measure of success regarding the summit.

And by that new measure the summit was a a huge success.

The Wall Street Journal explains The Good-News-Is-No-News China Summit

The main rule of presidential summitry with an adversary is first do no harm. By that standard President Trump’s Beijing parley with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week was a success. It didn’t achieve much, but it also didn’t appear to give away anything notable to the wily dictator.

We say “appear” because we can’t be sure based on the few details leaking out from the parties. Mr. Trump boasted about “fantastic” Chinese purchases to come of U.S. soybeans and aircraft. But China didn’t confirm the sales, and by our count this is the second time China has bought the same American soybeans. Or is it the third? Mr. Trump also said the two now agree on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, but there was no overt agreement from Mr. Xi.

The good news is that the President doesn’t seem to have granted Mr. Xi’s wish that the U.S. allow the sale of advanced computer chips to China. This is a Communist Party priority as it seeks to catch up with the U.S. on AI. But U.S. firms can’t get enough such chips themselves, and there’s no reason to help China catch up faster to the U.S. leaders.

The good news is nothing happened. By that measure this was a tremendous success.

However, I am not exactly sure why it’s better to sell China nothing than something on chips.

The US government has approved about 10 Chinese firms (including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent) to buy Nvidia’s H200 AI chips. However, no deliveries have been made. Beijing has stalled the deals to pressure Nvidia into selling more advanced tech and to boost domestic semiconductor alternatives.

So, quite literally nothing happened other than the US sent over an entourage of 10+ CEOs for a China pony show with Trump as the dog.

Oh, I almost forgot. China agreed to buy the same soybeans it has agreed to buy for years.

Success!