LITTLE ROCK — U.S. restrictions on imports of Chinese chicken, turkey and duck that are no longer in place broke global commerce rules, the World Trade Organization said Wednesday.
WTO judges in Geneva agreed with China that a congressional spending bill preventing authorities from processing shipments of cooked Chinese poultry unfairly closed the American market. China, the third-biggest market for U.S. farm goods, called the measure discriminatory and protectionist because its poultry met international health standards and it was shipping chicken to Europe and Japan.
The U.S. measure has expired, negating the need for judges to order the Obama administration to bring the law into line with WTO rules. Judges also opted not to issue a recommendation, as China had requested, that the U.S. avoid language similar to the disputed measure in future legislation “because these other measures are outside our terms of reference.”
China, once the second largest buyer of U.S. chicken, and the U.S. outlawed each other’s poultry in 2004 after an outbreak of bird flu. While China rescinded its ban, it now imposes tariffs on chicken imports from U.S. producers such as Tyson Foods Inc., Sanderson Farms Inc. and Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., a unit of Brazilian meat processor JBS SA, to counter what it calls unfair subsidies for U.S. poultry farmers.
The Department of Agriculture partly lifted the ban in 2006 by permitting China to ship cooked poultry to the U.S. provided it first imported the raw chicken from the U.S. or Canada. Even so, members of Congress added a provision in an appropriations bill, citing health concerns, that effectively prohibited the import of chickens processed in China.
The complaint against U.S.poultry restrictions was the fourth by China since it joined the WTO in 2001.
China had a record $266 billion trade surplus with the U.S. in 2009. Chinese customs bureau data show. China is the third-largest market for U.S. exports, buying $70 billion worth of U.S.-made goods in 2008 compared with $19 billion in 2001.
China passed Canada in 2007 to become the largest source of products shipped into the U.S., capping a six-year period when its exports to the U.S. more than tripled. China is the biggest overseas market for U.S. poultry, purchasing almost 800,000 metric tons valued at $722 million in 2008, according to the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council.
Business, Pages 27 on 09/30/2010