China slaps anti-dumping deposit

Brazil is the world’s largest chicken exporter

BEIJING: China will impose temporary anti-dumping measures on imports of Brazilian chicken meat, it said on Friday, at the same time as the United States pressures Beijing to reopen its market to American poultry products. Chinese importers of Brazilian chicken will be required to pay deposits ranging from 18.8% to 38.4% of the value of their shipments from June 9, the commerce ministry said in a statement. A preliminary ruling from the ministry found that Chinese producers had been “substantially damaged” by shipments from Brazil between 2013 and 2016, when the country supplied more than half of China’s imports of chicken meat.

The anti-dumping measures are another blow to Brazilian meatpackers, who are still recovering from a food safety scandal last year and a May truckers’ protest that forced farms to cull some 70 million chickens due to a lack of feed. They also show how third-party countries like Brazil, the world’s largest chicken exporter, could become collateral damage as the United States and China look for ways to head off a trade war.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2018.

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