International Law

US-China Trade Friction Turns Into Food Fight

By Stan

Yes, get ready for food-related issues to come to the fore over the next several months.

First, we’ve got both sides engaged in a cock fight — that is, a WTO dispute over Chinese chicken exports:

China on Monday formally requested the World Trade Organization (WTO) to set up an expert panel to investigate and rule whether a U.S. ban on Chinese poultry imports violates WTO regulations.

At the heart of the dispute is the U.S. Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, which contains a section prohibiting any funds being used to facilitate imports of poultry products from China. [Xinhua]

This dispute goes back a couple years when both countries stopped imports due to the bird flu. China opened its market after a while, the US didn’t. Simple, yes?

Not exactly. Seems like a lot of back story to this actually, including other legislation (see below), as well as pressure from US companies that have established partnerships with Chinese chicken producers (e.g. Tyson). As usual with fights over US trade policy, the action revolves around disputes between differently situated American companies.

At the same time, and more importantly perhaps to the bilateral relationship, we have the passage of the Food Safety Enhancement Act in the US House of Representatives. This is the government’s response to all those food scandals last year (which involved domestic and international sources, but probably hurt the image of China the most).(...)
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Full post as published by China Hearsay on August 01, 2009 (boomark / email).