Trump threatens China with cooking oil embargo as soybean spat escalates
Trump administration threatens ‘terminating business with China’ in retaliation for Beijing still refusing to buy soybeans from US farmers
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday called China “economically hostile” for not buying American soybeans and threatened to halt imports of cooking oil and other products from the country in retaliation.
“We are considering terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil, and other elements of Trade, as retribution,” he said. “As an example, we can easily produce Cooking Oil ourselves; we don’t need to purchase it from China.”
Earlier on Tuesday, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a CNBC interview that these new controls have derailed efforts by the two sides to settle trade differences. This has prompted Trump to hit imports from China with tariffs across the board, along with products from a wide array of other countries.