China drops tariffs on animal feed from Asian countries as US dispute intensifies

By Josephine Mason and Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will abolish import duties on animal feed ingredients, including soybeans, soybean meal and rapeseed from five Asian countries, the Chinese Ministry said on Tuesday Foreign Affairs. United States.

China will lower its tariffs on soybean, soybean meal, soybean meal, rapeseed and fishmeal from Bangladesh, India, Laos, South Korea and Sri Lanka from July 1st.

Soybean duties are currently 3 percent, rapeseed 9 percent, soybean meal and cake 5 percent and fishmeal 2 percent.

Although the government has been planning tariff cuts since March, the cuts indicate that China is taking steps to reduce its reliance on US soy in the context of the growing trade dispute between the two countries. Soy is China's largest agricultural import from the United States in terms of value.

"This demonstrates the attitude of the government that we will be importing from other countries, the market will understand that it is a signal," said Monica Tu, an analyst at Shanghai JC Intelligence Co Ltd.

Outside India, the included countries are relatively small soybean producers. None of them has exported oilseeds to China in 2017.

India has grown 11 million tonnes of beans during the 2016/17 marketing year, but has exported only 269,000 tonnes, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. United.

However, the country has exported just over 2 million tonnes of soy flour worldwide.

India produced 7 million tons of rapeseed that year, but did not export any crops.

China has agreed to lower tariffs on more than 2,000 items under the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement signed in Thailand in January 2017. The Ministry of Finance announced in March that it would introduce the cuts. tariffs from July 1st.

Yet the move comes less than two weeks after Beijing announced that it would impose additional duties of 25% on 659 US goods worth $ 50 billion, including soybeans, while trade between the two largest economies in the world is increasing.

The additional penalties were in retaliation for Washington's decision to levy tariffs on Chinese products and raised concerns that they will inflate costs and cut supplies of ingredients used in the country. animal feed for the large livestock sector.

(Report by Josephine Mason and Dominique Patton, edited by Joseph Radford and Christian Schmollinger)