The trade war between the United States and China is still underway. Earlier this month, America made another attempt to undermine the Chinese economy. The thing is, that up until recently, America used to be one of the biggest exporters of crude oil to China. In summer, the U.S. export of crude oil to China used to be equal to 10,5 million barrels a month. At this point, America has almost suspended the export of crude oil to China. Last month American oil companies shipped as little as 600K barrels, with no oil shipping planned for this month.
There is nothing to be surprised with, given the fact that China has been rapidly catching up with the United Stated in terms of economy. America was afraid of China taking the economic lead one day. However, after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, the situation started to changing. President Trump was indignant at the fact that many American companies has moved their production facilities abroad - to Mexico, China and other countries with much cheaper labor force. He demanded that those companies bring the facilities back to the USA, otherwise he promised to impose big taxes on those companies.
At the same time, Donald Trump doesn't like the trade turnover between the two countries. He was shocked to find out that China exports to the USA dozens of times more than it imports form the USA. Shortly after that, the United States imposed extra duties on the products imported from China. The Chinese government responded with similar measures. All in all, all of those measures affect the turnover that's equal to billions of dollars.
It's interesting to note that Russia is now ready to make up for the import of American oil. Moscow and Beijing have been discussing the opportunity of building several pipelines to export crude oil and natural gas to China. At the same time, China seems to be seeking to import some crude oil form Iran despite all of those warnings coming from the USA. In the meantime, Brent oil has already set another major price high since 2014 at 85 dollars per barrel, even though it's currently trading around 80 dollars per barrel.
