Cotton futures rose over 1% on Tuesday to scale a more than two-week peak after China said it would give tariff exemptions on imports from United States to fulfill trade-deal commitments. Cotton contracts for May rose 0.73 cent, or 1.1%, to 69.14 cents per lb by 01:37 p.m. EST (1837 GMT).
Prices hit 69.72 cents/lb, a peak since January 31, earlier in the session.
China will grant exemptions on retaliatory duties imposed against 696 US goods, the most substantial tariff relief to be offered so far.
“The tariff relief for imports coming from US and cotton was included in those exemptions and we are seeing some more activity due to that," said Bailey Thomen, cotton risk management associate with INTL FCStone.
The National Cotton Council (NCC) projected 2020 US planted area of nearly 13 million acres, down 5.5% from 2019, Louis Rose, director of research and analytics at Tennessee-based Rose Commodity Group said in a note on Monday.
Cotton speculators on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) raised net long positions by 2,392 contracts to 14,159 in the week to February 11, data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission showed. Total futures market volume fell by 2,170 to 43,646 lots. Data showed total open interest remained at 211,866 contracts in the previous session. Certificated cotton stocks deliverable as of February 14 totaled 32,361 480-lb bales, up from 32,152 in the previous session.