WASHINGTON — The Meat Institute submitted comments on June 24 to the US Trade Representative (USTR), calling for comprehensive trade agreements as a long-term strategy to support US meat and poultry companies and to hold China accountable for “retaliatory” tariffs.

The Section 301 tariffs, which were expanded in May by the Biden administration, have caused undue harm to US agricultural exports, including meat exports, the Meat Institute said.

Originally implemented in 2018, Section 301 led to China introducing its own tariffs, which accounted for 95% of agricultural export losses by 2019, totaling $25.7 billion, according to the Meat Institute.

The group added that, currently, US pork exports to China face a 25% retaliatory tariff on top of the most-favored-nation (MFN) rate of 8%, creating a significant disadvantage for the US pork industry compared to China’s other pork suppliers.

“A tit-for-tat exercise in tariff escalation does not make US supply chains or key economic sectors, like agriculture, more secure or resilient,” said Julie Anna Potts, Meat Institute president and chief executive officer, in the group’s comments. “Instead, such a policy increases costs for consumers, importers and exporters, constrains the ability of small- and medium-sized companies to grow and compete in the global marketplace, and is antithetical to the administration’s pursuit of a worker-centric trade agenda.”

The Meat Institute noted that while the Phase One Agreement with China has simplified the registration process for US meat and poultry export facilities, it has not been an end-all solution. For more than half of 2023, China did not update the approved US establishment list, nor did it process administrative revisions to the list, failing to fulfill core tenets of the Phase One Agreement.

Additional barriers to trade remain, including China’s requirement that US pork imports be accompanied by ractopamine-free certificates of analysis, China’s zero-tolerance policy regarding pathogens on the surface of raw pork and beef imports, and China’s ban on the use of Codex and FDA-approved beta agonists.

The Meat Institute believes that restoring US leadership in international trade through comprehensive trade agreements would be an effective strategy in place of USTR’s Section 301 regulations.

“Market diversification initiatives, coupled with strategic competition with China, will lift all sectors of the US economy without exacerbating tensions or existing economic hardship,” Potts said.