India wins in cotton market as US-China trade dispute escalates

Bloomberg

In the global cotton market, India stands to be a winner amid escalating trade tensions between the US, the world’s top exporter, and China, the biggest buyer.
The weak rupee makes India’s exports more appealing, and freight costs to the neighbouring Asian country can be relatively cheap, Keith Brown, the president of Keith Brown & Co., a brokerage in Moultrie, Georgia, said. “It’s a question of price and proximity,” he said.
“China will still get cotton from the US” possibly indirectly, he said. Mills may
obtain some cargoes via Vietnam, or buy American supplies including a tariff, he said.
Cotton on June 19 tumbled by the exchange limit on ICE Futures US in New York and has slumped 12 percent from a four-year high of 94.82 cents a pound on June 6.
China has bought almost 1.5 million bales from the US this season, “and traders are now concerned about cancellation of those sales,” Louis Rose, director of research and analysis at Rose Commodity Group in Memphis, Tennessee, said in a report. A bale weighs 480 pounds, or 218 kilograms.
The Cotton Association of India said that output this season will rise 8.3 percent from a year earlier, boosting
exports. China’s inventories have dwindled from a record in 2015 amid a decline in acreage.
The government plans to issue additional import quotas because adverse weather damaged the domestic crop, and a shortfall of high-quality fibre looms.
In the US, cotton futures rose as much as 21 percent this year as a drought eroded crop prospects in West Texas, the top producing region.