China syndromeU.S.-China farm trade tensions grow
U.S. companies, steel producers, and unions have filed dozens of domestic trade complaints against Chinese imports; economists say the imports of food based on labor intensive crops are next in line for trade friction between the United States and China
A U.S. agricultural economist said that as the United States and the world import more food based on labor-intensive crops from China, Chinese farm exports will become a growing source of trade tension between China and the rest o f the world.
This is already happening. Reuters reports that importers around the world have already launched more than thirty farm trade cases against China in recent years, including U.S. cases aimed at stemming rising imports of orange juice, garlic, and mushrooms. “Personally, I think there will be more trade disputes,” said Colin Carter of University of California-Davis, noting that problems with food safety issues have pared Chinese food exports in recent years. “China will get through this food quality problem, trade barriers are coming down, and (disputes) will show up as anti-dumping cases,” Carter said in an interview during the U.S. Agriculture Department’s outlook forum.
U.S. companies, steel producers, and unions have filed dozens of domestic trade complaints against Chinese imports as exports of manufactured goods surged at a time of rising U.S. jobless numbers.
China has reacted with trade cases of its own, including new anti-dumping duties on U.S. chicken exports, which U.S. poultry exporters have said will price them out of their No. 2 market, worth $620 million for the first eleven months of 2009.
The United States is hopeful that the trade frictions will not affect the export of U.S. soybeans to China. Carter noted that soybeans are the top U.S. export to China, which the USDA forecast will become the top overall foreign market for U.S. farm goods in a few years. China depends on soybean imports for vegetable oil and the high-protein meal used to feed its massive and expanding livestock sector. Carter said that if China had to produce its own soybeans, it would need 30 percent more farmland, Carter said.
China has more than twice the number of poultry as the United States, and more than four times as many hogs, USDA economist Fred Gale told the conference. Gale noted farmland is in short supply in China, which holds 9 percent of global agricultural land but 22 percent of world population.
