Chinese tariffs hit US food exporters, leaving other nations to make hay while the sun shines

US food exports to China have been hit with higher tariffs on soybeans, pork, wheat and frozen seafood in retaliation to Donald Trump’s levies on Chinese goods

Brazil and Argentina for soybeans, Canada for wheat and lobsters, Germany and Spain for pork are reaping the benefit

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For the week ending August 15, US farmers exported just 6,900 metric tonnes of pork to China, compared to 19,484 metric tonnes over the same week a year earlier. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:00am, 5 Sep 2019Updated: 11:10am, 5 Sep 2019

At the start of the summer, a group of officials from Maine wrote to US President Donald Trump, urging financial support for the state’s iconic lobster industry.

“One of the first victims of retaliation imposed by China after the initial round of tariffs was lobster shipped from Maine,” wrote Maine Senators Angus King and Susan Collins, along with state Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden.

China had become the second largest importer of Maine lobster, buying US$128.5 million in the second half of 2017, before increasing purchases by 169 per cent over the first half of 2018.

But then the tariffs hit, and last year, the market died and US lobster exports to China fell by 80 per cent in 2018.

China has not lost its taste for the delicacy: over the first half of 2019, Canadian lobster sales to China were almost equivalent to their total for 2018, according to the Associated Press, as the same species of lobster exported from Maine is also found in waters off Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

On Sunday, things got worse for American lobstermen – along with food producers across numerous industries – when a new raft of Chinese tariffs further jeopardised the market share for American food exporters in the world’s most populous nation.

With frozen Maine lobsters now attracting a tariff of 45 per cent, after an increase of 10 per cent, Canadian fishermen can look forward to more and bigger paydays ahead, leaving Maine’s political leaders to continue pondering “the blow of Chinese tariffs on a hallmark American industry that has done nothing to deserve the punishment that it is presently forced to bear”.