By Keith Brown DTN Cotton Correspondent 

The cotton market was demonstratively lower Tuesday, as China indicated it was not ready to set a September date for renewing the trade talks. Such was its response to the fact that the U.S. increased tariffs on a certain amount of Chinese goods as of September 1.

Currently, China is resisting a settlement and is somewhat pulling out all the stops to shore up its economy. For example, it has deliberately devalued its currency and lowered its tariffs to other nations. It is also considering a new and massive stimulus surge its economy. Such actions suggested the trade war will be a long struggle.

Tuesday afternoon, USDA will release its latest crop condition data. Of late, the 2019 crop has been backing up in development, especially for Texas. The field conditions during this growing season for many areas has been one too much, too little, too late.

Tuesday’s settlement (57.86 cents) for December cotton marks the second lowest close for the year. The lowest close was 57.82 cents from August 27. Such a poor performance serves only to encourage speculators to continue in their bearish drive to lower levels. As it stands, the next obvious chart point for December Cotton has to be the February 2016 low of 54.19 cents.

For Tuesday, December cotton settled at 57.86 cents, down 0.97 cent, March was closed at 58.56 cents, off 0.88 cent and December 2020 finished at 61.26 cents, down 1.02 cents. Tuesday’s estimated volume was 31,276 contracts traded.