Pork sector reacts to Chinese tariffs

Apr 03, 2018

China imposed tariffs on 128 U.S. products

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

One of America’s largest trading partners has imposed tariffs that will impact about US$2 billion worth of agricultural goods.

Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the government’s decision to impose 25-percent tariffs on several products, including pork.

The U.S. and China have been threatening one another with tariffs since President Trump announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in early March.

Pork producers thought the countries would use the threats of levies as a negotiation tactic.

“We were hoping it was just brinkmanship and cooler heads would prevail. But instead, some of our worst fears seem to be coming true,” Brian Duncan, an Ogle County, Ill. hog farmer and vice-president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, told the Chicago Tribune yesterday. “This is significant, real and serious for rural America.”

China is America’s second-largest agricultural export market. More than US$21 billion worth of U.S. agricultural exports traveled to China in 2016, including more than US$1 billion in pork.

Any tariffs on pork exports to China will be costly, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) said.

“Exports are extremely critical to the financial well-being of our producers,” Neil Dierks, CEO of the NPPC, said in a statement yesterday. “We are disappointed that China has placed an additional 25 percent tariff on U.S. pork exports.”

A total of 128 products will be subject to Chinese tariffs, including 15-percent tariffs on other agricultural goods like apples and grapes. But the Chinese don’t want these tariffs to linger.

“As the two largest economies in the world, cooperation between China and the United States is the only correct choice,” the commerce ministry’s statement said. “The two sides should resolve their concerns through dialogue and negotiation.”

Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”