ICE cotton futures ease as U.S.-China trade tensions weigh

    June 25 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures edged lower on Monday
as investors remained guarded amid an ongoing trade conflict
between world's biggest cotton exporter United States and top
consumer China.
    * The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S., the
third-month December contract              , settled down 0.38
cent, or 0.45 percent, at 84.92 cents per lb. It traded within a
range of 84.4 and 86.22 cents a lb.
    * The third month contract        fell about 5 percent last
week
in its biggest weekly decline since mid-September as trade
tensions escalated between United States and China. 
    * "After the kind of moves we had in cotton (due to tariffs
dispute), you would expect to see a market that is capable of
moving higher for recovery trade. That has not been developing
so far," said Jack Scoville, vice president with Price Futures
Group in Chicago. 
    * "It (trade dispute) has kept people from doing a heck of a
lot
here. It will continue to weigh on the market," Scoville said,
adding "there was some rain in the Texas panhandle. That's part
of what's going on over there." 
    * The U.S. Treasury Department is drafting curbs that would
block
firms with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying
U.S. companies with "industrially significant technology," a
government official briefed on the matter said on Sunday.
            
    * U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that
forthcoming investment restrictions from the department will not
be specific to China but would apply "to all countries that are
trying to steal our technology."             
    * Total futures market volume fell by 1,695 to 16,496 lots.
Data
showed total open interest fell 2,664 to 259,282 contracts in
the previous session.
    * Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as
of June
22 totaled 86,072 480-lb bales, up from 86,067 in the previous
session.


 (Reporting by Vijaykumar Vedala in Bengaluru; editing by Diane
Craft)