ICE cotton marks biggest weekly decline in nine months

    June 22 (Reuters) - ICE cotton futures rose more than 1
percent on Friday, supported by a rebound in commodity prices,
but the natural fiber marked its worst week in nine months amid
escalating trade tensions between the United States and China.
    * The most active cotton contract on ICE Futures U.S., the
third-month December contract              , settled up 1.01
cent, or 1.2 percent, at 85.3 cents per lb. It traded within a
range of 84.2 and 85.62 cents a lb.
    * The third month contract        fell about 5 percent for
the
week, the biggest weekly decline since mid-September.
    * "Today cotton is being bolstered by the macro scenario.
Commodities in general are rallying today after dropping due to
trade concerns," said Gabriel Crivorot, an analyst at Societe
Generale in New York.
    * U.S. protectionism is self-defeating and a "symptom of
paranoid
delusions" that must not distract China from its path to
modernisation, Chinese media said on Friday as Beijing kept up
with its war of words with Washington.             
    * U.S. is the world's biggest cotton exporter, while China
is the
top consumer.  
    * "As far as cotton is concerned, we need to wait and see
whether
the impact is going to be as significant as some traders fear.
China will probably still have to import more cotton over the
coming years, even from the U.S.," British merchant Plexus
Cotton said in a note. 
    * "Fundamentals remain supportive, apart from the trade
dispute.
The U.S. crop has been struggling during this planting season
and needs to prove itself in the months ahead, while the supply
pipeline will be about as tight as we have ever seen it at the
end of summer," it added.
    * Speculators cut their net long position in cotton by
16,164
contracts to 93,044 in week to June 19, U.S. Commodity Futures
Trading Commission data showed on Friday.        
    * Total futures market volume fell by 4,972 to 18,131 lots.
Data
showed total open interest fell 3,880 to 261,946 contracts in
the previous session.
    * Certificated cotton stocks CERT-COT-STX deliverable as
of June
21 totaled 86,067 480-lb bales, up from 85,439 in the previous
session.


 (Reporting by Eileen Soreng and Vijaykumar Vedala in Bengaluru
Editing by Marguerita Choy)