According to Reuters, the measures taken by the United States and China to lower each other's import tariffs and conduct negotiations have been widely welcomed by the market, but the easing of the situation has done little to help restore trade in energy commodities.

Specifically, the trade truce between the two major economies, China and the United States, will reduce the tariffs on Chinese imports by the United States to 30% and those on American goods by China to 10% for a period of 90 days. The agreement was reached after two days of talks between the two sides in Geneva last week, easing the previously tense trade relations. However, this has no other effect on the trade situation after the 90-day period, and its effect on encouraging China to resume purchasing US energy commodities is even negligible.

The most likely scenario is that American importers might purchase as many Chinese goods as possible at lower tariffs to replenish their inventories. However, it is unlikely that China will resume imports of crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal from the United States.

Data from commodity analysis agency Kpler shows that there are no plans for US crude oil to arrive at Chinese ports in May, and only three batches of goods were unloaded in April.

In 2024, China imported approximately 242,000 barrels of crude oil from the United States every day, lower than the 420,000 barrels per day in 2023, which was the year with the largest import volume on record. In 2024, China's reliance on US LNG slightly increased, with an annual import volume of 4.31 million tons, accounting for approximately 5.5% of the total imports. But similar to crude oil, China has stopped importing US LNG since February this year.

Meanwhile, China's coal imports from the United States have also dropped significantly. Kpler data shows that only one batch of coking coal arrived in May, but this batch of goods may be resold to other countries before arriving. In 2024, China imported 10.78 million tons of coal from the United States, of which approximately 75% was coking coal, a high-quality fuel for steelmaking. Industry insiders say that China may use Australian goods to replace US coking coal, but this could lead to a slight increase in costs as steel mills will have to snap up some Australian coal from other buyers such as India and Japan.

Although the reduction of tariffs is not sufficient to restart China's imports of US energy commodities, it is likely to once again become the main negotiation point of the talks in the coming days. Any agreement between China and the United States may include a commitment to importing more US crude oil, LNG and coal.

But it is worth noting that the agreements reached by Trump with China during his first term had little effect. According to the "Phase One Agreement" reached in January 2020, China agreed to import an additional 18.5 billion US dollars and 33.9 billion US dollars of US energy commodities respectively in 2020 and 2021 on top of the 9.1 billion US dollars of imports in 2017, as well as approximately 36.5 billion US dollars of agricultural products annually.

Based on the crude oil price at that time, during the peak period of China's imports of US crude oil, the gap still reached 50% of the required amount, and the gap for LNG and coal was even larger. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has ended any opportunity for China to increase its energy imports from the United States. Reuters also warned that skepticism should be maintained towards "the future commitment reached between Trump and the Chinese government that China will significantly increase its energy imports to the United States".