The United States accounted for only 3 percent of China’s natural gas imports last year. Those purchases could now dry up entirely in the trade war.
China has stopped buying liquefied natural gas from the United States after imposing a 15 percent tariff on these shipments on Feb. 10, ship tracking data shows, in the latest sign that Beijing continues to decouple from the U.S. economy.
China’s imports of L.N.G. from the United States had already slumped to low levels from November through January, data from China’s customs agency shows. China instead expanded its purchases from Russia, which supplied China with four times as much L.N.G. last year as the United States did.
Only two cargo ships of L.N.G. from the United States were headed to China when Beijing imposed tariffs on American fossil fuels in retaliation for President Trump’s initial round of 10 percent tariffs on Chinese goods. One ship reached China before the tariffs took effect and unloaded its cargo while the other went to Bangladesh to avoid the tariff, according to Kpler, a Belgian energy data company.
Europe’s boycott of natural gas from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has meant that Russian gas sells for very little, while European companies have paid considerably more for gas from elsewhere, including the United States. So Chinese electric utilities have been able to buy a lot of gas at low cost from Russia instead of the United States.
Chinese energy firms have been big buyers of L.N.G. in the United States, but were bringing fairly little of that fuel to China even before the tariff took effect. Instead, Chinese companies have been sending their purchases from American ports to sell to Europe.