Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 9/20/11

The United States has filed a complaint against China with the World Trade Organization over Beijing’s imposition of duties on imports of U.S. chicken products, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced today in a news release.

Kirk said Washington filed the dispute-settlement case “to protect up to 300,000 American agricultural jobs that are being threatened” by the duties.

The move marks the latest in a series of enforcement steps the United States has taken to hold China accountable for its WTO commitments.

U.S. officials say China must play by the rules to which it agreed when it joined the WTO, including commitments to maintain open markets on a non-discriminatory basis.

“To be clear, the United States does not arbitrarily seek disagreements with China,” Kirk said in a news conference today. “However, we will not stand still if we believe that China has violated its commitments as a WTO member and is therefore threatening American jobs — in this case hundreds of thousands of American poultry industry jobs. Our actions against China simply demonstrate that the United States is prepared to take every measure necessary to stand up for American workers by ensuring that China — or any of our other trading partners — does not misuse laws to prevent exports of U.S. products.”   

  
Washington is challenging China’s antidumping and countervailing duties against imports of U.S. chicken broiler products, arguing that Beijing didn’t follow WTO rules including due process in an antidumping investigation of U.S. processors. In the antidumping investigation, China imposed dumping duties ranging from 50.3 percent to 53.4 percent for the participating U.S. producers and exporters, and set an “all others” rate of 105.4 percent. In the countervailing duty investigation, China imposed countervailing duties of between 4.0 percent and 12.5 percent for the participating U.S. producers and exporters and an “all others” rate of 30.3 percent.

“The U.S. industry agrees that the Chinese methodology was seriously flawed and that the anti-dumping proceeding did not comply with international rules,” the National Chicken Council and the U.S.A. Poultry & Egg Export Council said in a joint statement supporting the government’s decision. “The Chinese authorities also found that U.S. poultry exports benefit from farm subsidies, such as support prices for corn and soybeans. The reality is that U.S. poultry receives no government subsidies and does not benefit from any of the government crop programs.”

The United States was China’s largest chicken broiler products supplier, with over 600,000 metric tons of broiler products exported in 2009, before the duties took effect in response to alleged antidumping practices. Since late September 2009 U.S. exports to China have plummeted by 90 percent. Industry sources told U.S. officials that if these duties are not lifted, the U.S. poultry industry will have lost about $1 billion in sales to China by the end of this year alone.

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