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New list of E.U. products smacked with tariff |
By Anna Wolfe - 02.06.2009
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WASHINGTON--Will your customers pay $80 per pound for Roquefort? Twenty dollars for a European chocolate bar? Or will they pay double the current price for Italian mineral waters or for some of the world's finest bone-in hams? That's what will happen if the U.S. Trade Representative's Revised Trade Action goes into effect on March 23.
If the trade action is not repealed or delayed, it will be the first change to the list of E.U. products subject to additional duties in Beef Hormones dispute since 1999.
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It all goes back to 1998 when the World Trade Organization ruled that the European Union's ban on U.S. hormone treated beef was not based on science and was inconsistent with WTO rules. With the WTO's authorization, in 1999 the U.S. imposed additional duties on a list of E.U. products with a total trade value of $116.8 million.
On Jan. 15, the USTR published its revised trade action, listing 65 classes of E.U. products targeted with 100 percent duty: oats, chocolate bars, lingonbery and raspberry jams, bone-in hams and shoulders, and Italian mineral waters. The duty on Roquefort, on the original list, has been increased to 300 percent from 100 percent.
Items removed from the list include mustard, preserved tomatoes and rusks. Truffles and goose liver are among the products staying on the list with 100 percent duties.
"We don't know if it is going to hit," said David Biltchik, chairman of Consultants International Group, Washington, which represents the Italian National Association of Meat Processors in the United States. "The new administration may delay implementation. People are waiting to hear."
As the Obama administration moves to review the Bush administration policies and heal the rift with the European Union, Biltchick believes Obama's message of change might prevail. "They (the Obama administration) don't want to start their relationship with the European Union in a negative way."
At press time, President Obama's pick for U.S. Trade Representative--former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk--had yet to be approved by Congress, and the government agency is working to implement the measure.
So Biltchik has advised the Italian National Association of Meat Processors "to anticipate for the worse."
Importers interviewed by Gourmet News including Rogers Collection, Portland, Maine; Crystal Food Imports, Lynn, Mass.; and The Cheese Works, Alameda, Calif.--were all looking at bringing in additional inventory of some of the targeted products before the March 23 deadline--in case it goes into effect as scheduled.
Taylor Griffin, co-owner of The Rogers Collection, said "people are madly trying to ship to get product in the door" before the March 23 date. Still, Griffin is hopeful the Obama administration will put the kaibosh on the measure. "Once the White House staff gets to this issue, it might not happen," he said.
If the measure goes through, it will kill the market for the bone-in Iberico ham which The Rogers Collection imports through its Fermin USA division.
"Forget it, we can't sell $400 pound meat," Griffin said.
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