China has significantly tightened its import inspections for pork from the United States. This has been making deliveries more expensive for weeks. Trade experts see this as a defiant warning to Washington in response to recent US trade sanctions on Chinese products.
Even the world's largest pig trader, the Chinese WH group in Hong Kong, owned by the US company Smithfield, is suffering from the intensified investigations for US goods.
Customs officers in the ports now open every delivery that arrives, otherwise they only do random checks. For consultants, the behavior of the Chinese comes as no surprise. In the last week already deliveries were rejected because of defects.
President Donald Trump is threatening import duties on Chinese imports worth $ 150 million and accusing China of unfair trading practices and intellectual property theft. Beijing rejects these allegations. Diplomats from both sides are looking for solutions.
US pig deliveries linger two weeks at the Chinese customs, otherwise the customs inspection takes only one to two days.Since most deliveries are frozen, there is no further danger from the waiting period. However, Beijing had also imposed 25% punitive tariffs on US pork imports in April in response to US punitive tariffs on steel and aluminum, also at 25%.
The US was China's largest foreign supplier last year, with $ 489 million worth of pork deliveries in 2017. In addition to the punitive tariffs, the return samples taken by customs without compensation also cost a lot of money. That is currently up to 20% of the quantities instead of the previous 5%.
Other supplier countries, such as Canada or Europe, have not yet reported such harassment. But they have also received no additional orders, since in China itself has been oversupplied for weeks and the prices for live pigs are in the basement. China's pork imports fell by 10% to 595,611 tonnes in the first three months of the year.
Text: HANSA Derivatives Trading GmbH /
