How trade war between US and China could be fueling Amazon fires

The danger of the current situation is that China's hunger for soy may derail the halting recent progress in ending deforestation

The fires currently consuming Brazil’s Amazon rainforest seem a world away from the tense diplomacy in the U.S. trade war with China. In truth, they’re more closely connected than you might suspect.

One of Beijing’s main acts of retaliation in the fight has been to freeze purchases of the 30 million metric tons to 40 million tons of American soybeans it imports each year. That’s left it more dependent than ever on Brazilian soy to take up the slack. Chinese imports from Brazil in the 12 months through April came to 71 million tons, about as much as it imported