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Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
All eyes are on Beijing today where President Trump has landed for a high-stakes summit with President Xi Jinping, and markets across Asia traded in mixed fashion as investors weighed the outcome. Trade, tariffs, and technology restrictions are all on the table, and the meeting comes as data shows stunning declines in bilateral commerce — American exports of cars, soybeans, and crude have dropped sharply, while imports of phones, computers, and furniture have fallen in kind. The economic damage from this trade war is no longer abstract.
Turning to the grains complex, wheat gave back some of Tuesday's limit gains across all three exchanges Wednesday. Chicago soft red winter closed steady to three and a half cents lower, Kansas City hard red winter fell as much as seven and three quarter cents, and Minneapolis spring wheat shed roughly four cents. After the kind of vertical move we saw Tuesday, some profit-taking and consolidation is entirely expected.
In cotton, futures closed with modest gains on the session, up seven to forty-nine points, though contracts did pull back from midday highs. The monthly WASDE report pegged two thousand twenty-six domestic cotton yield at eight hundred fifty-two pounds per acre, giving traders some fundamental context to work with even as a stronger dollar and softer crude added headwinds.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.["https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/cotton-close-modest-wednesday-gains","https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/wheat-posts-modest-correction-wednesday","https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/14/asia-pacific-markets-live-donald-trump-xi-jinping-us-china-meeting-hang-seng-nikkei-kospi.html","https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-layoffs-marketing-staff-ai-usage-growth-2026-5","https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/05/13/mike-lawler-says-rand-pauls-son-hurled-disgusting-antisemitic-insults-in-reported-drunk-tirade/","https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2026/05/13/nyt-pips-answers-thursday-may-14/","https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenroberts/2026/05/13/as-trump-xi-meet-stunning-declines-from-trade-war-appear-personal/","https://www.forbes.com/sites/danafeldman/2026/05/13/netflixs-first-live-mma-fight-will-be-ronda-rouseys-last/"]
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