U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer told CBS "Face the Nation" that the U.S. will double its exports to China under the "phase one" trade deal. "By the second year, we will just about double exports of goods to China, if this, if this agreement is in place," Lighthizer said. "Double exports. We had about 128 billion dollars in 2017. We're going to go up at least by a hundred, probably a little over one hundred." "Just massive numbers," he said.
The U.S. and China agreed to a "phase one" trade deal Friday that would reduce tariffs on some Chinese goods and could be a boon to American farmers who have been hard hit by the 19-month trade war. "This is totally done," Lighthizer said on Sunday after months of mixed signals that had the media and the public wondering if China and the U.S. would ever stay at the table long enough to make any kind of deal. "A phase one deal does the following: one, it keeps in place $380 billion worth of tariffs to defend, protect U.S. technology," Lighthizer said.
However, the shortage of animal protein in the Chinese market is forcing the Chinese to increase imports of pork and beef from the United States, with particular emphasis on pork. Over the past four weeks, US pork exports to China totaled 54,000 tons, despite 70% tariffs.
"This is almost three times the level of 4-week pork exports to China on average in the first 6 months of 2019. Since the beginning of this year, pork exports from the U.S. to China have reached 316,000 tons, which is 1236% more than in 2018. We expect JBS and Tyson to completely abandon ractopamine in their products by January, so that weekly US pork shipments to China could exceed 20,000 tons, equivalent to about 200,000 pigs. We expect Canada to return to the previous level of exports of its pork to China. Indeed, prior to the June ban, Canada shipped 10,000 tons of pork a week to China," said Jim Long, President-CEO Genesus Inc.
Due to ASF, the number of pigs in China has fallen by 50%. In 2020, a further decrease in pork production in the country is expected, which will lead to an increase in the meat deficit in the market.
Based on piginfo.ru and foxbusiness.com.
