Despite Trump’s promises and false claims that China had already begun buying massive amounts of U.S. agricultural products, China said this week that it will not increase import quotas to accommodate additional purchases from the U.S.

China said this week that it will not increase import quotas on agricultural products.

CNBC: “China remains vague on how much the country will increase purchases of U.S. farm goods, considered a critical part of a trade agreement with Washington. Han Jun, vice minister of agriculture and rural affairs, confirmed to Chinese financial news site Caixin that import quotas for wheat, corn and rice will not increase.”

Trump has lied for months to farmers that China had already begun to buy $50 billion worth of U.S. agriculture.

TRUMP: “We just made a deal for our farmers, where $40 billion to $50 billion of agricultural products are going to be bought by China. And they’re going to start now before we even sign the agreement. They’ve already started.” [Hannity, Fox News, 10/21/19]

TRUMP: “Thanks to my tariffs, we will soon have over $100 billion from a country that didn’t want to do anything with us, and I will tell you they started buying our farm product; you see that. They started buying a lot of our product even before the deals are done.”

Trump has been burned by China’s promises to buy agriculture before, and China has refused to commit to any specifics.

CNBC: “Chinese officials have not confirmed an exact figure.”

Politico: “FARMERS AWAIT PROMISED PURCHASES FROM CHINA: One day before Trump sat down with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month at the G-20 gathering in Osaka, Japan, the Agriculture Department announced that China had bought 544,000 metric tons of U.S. soybeans — its largest purchase since March.  But no new sales have been announced since, despite Trump’s promise that China would buy large amounts of agricultural goods from U.S. farmers ‘almost immediately’ as the two sides relaunched trade negotiations.”