Without warning, China announced the suspension imports of liquefied natural gas from the United States. Beijing has indicated this is in response to the United States’ 10% import tariffs on Chinese goods in February.
In a master stroke, Chinese buyers redirected LNG ships that were originally scheduled to sail to East Asia and diverted these sales to European markets instead, thus directly avoiding US tariffs and grabbing market share in Europe from the US.
In March 2025, Australian energy giant Woodside announced that it had reached a cooperation agreement with a Chinese gas company and planned to supply about 600,000 tons of LNG to China each year from 2027, and this agreement will last for 15 years.
Experts now say that the policies during the Trump era will greatly increase the risk of “decoupling” between the world’s largest LNG buyers and sellers. Without these important Chinese orders, US LNG companies may face losses of up to $1.5 billion each year.
Source: Asia Hot Topics, Mar 31, 2025. https://youtu.be/uTUM1Cl9Efk?t=113
China Environment News 