Chinese trade officials cancel planned trip to two US farming states
- Vice-Minister for Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun and others on the trade team were supposed to visit Montana and Nebraska
- US markets drop after news of cancelled visit and Trump’s mixed signals about trade talks with China
A visit by Chinese trade officials to two American farming states, part of an effort by a larger delegation visiting Washington to get bilateral trade talks on track, has been cancelled because of a changed travel schedule, according to an official at the Montana Farm Bureau Federation.
The head of the group that was scheduled to visit Montana and Nebraska will now to return to Beijing earlier than planned. News of the cancellation came as bilateral talks in Washington, which US President Donald Trump said were “making a lot of progress”, continued for a second day.
Vice-Minister for Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun was heading up the team of negotiators that was supposed to visit Montana for two days starting on Monday and then move on to Nebraska, part of the larger effort by the team visiting Washington, headed by China’s vice-minister for finance, Liao Min.
“What I was told by [an official at the Chinese embassy in Washington] was that according to an updated agenda for the Chinese delegation, that Vice-Minister Han and his team had to return to China earlier than previously planned,” Rebecca Colnar, the Montana Farm Bureau Federation’s director of public relations, said on Friday.
“We had not gotten into any planning” because farm bureau officials had only been notified about the visit a day earlier, she said.
Chinese embassy officials declined to comment on Han’s planned visit or its cancellation.