News

Trade tensions are costing pork it’s “biggest opportunity”

A National Pork Producers Council official says U.S. pork producers are missing the industry’s biggest opportunity ever.  “China represents now the biggest sales opportunity in the history of U.S. pork and unfortunately because of the ongoing trade dispute, we’re not able to capitalize on that.”

Jim Monroe says China has lost more hogs to African Swine Fever than the U.S. produces, and the current trade tensions sending that business to other producers.

NPPC Vice President Nick Giordano told a Washington D.C. business conference the U.S. would be in a perfect position to take advantage of this massive import surge in the world’s largest pork-consuming nation and single handedly put a huge dent in the U.S. trade imbalance with China, but American producers still face a stifling 62 percent tariff.

Monroe tells Brownfield the China tariffs are costing U.S. producers about eight dollars a hog or about a billion dollars a year.

Economist Dermot Hayes from Iowa State University says estimates show China will lose more pork because of African Swine Fever than the U.S. produces.