Pork and chicken are key to easing US trade tensions: Steenhuisen

News24

a day ago

South Africa, struggling to reset relations with the US, is willing to give way on so-called phytosanitary requirements for poultry-meat imports, but fears an impasse with its second-biggest trading partner over pork shipments.
Washington's trade complaints against Pretoria — which have triggered a threat of a 30% tariff on imports from Africa's largest economy — span a range of industries from vehicles to citrus. The meat trade has also been a sticking point, with US producers viewing Pretoria's animal-health requirements as a constraint on doing business, according to Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen.
The health rules and excise duty charged on pork and chicken from the US 'are the two key focus areas' in easing trade tensions, he said in an interview at a meat conference in Somerset West near Cape Town on Thursday.
Differences between the two nations extend beyond trade — President Donald Trump has spread the false conspiracy theory that white farmers have been subjected to a genocide in South Africa and the authorities have been seizing their land. There have been no official land seizures in South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994.
The US has also criticized South Africa for taking Israel to an international court over its war with Hamas in Gaza and its relations with American foes, including Iran.
To assuage concerns over its restrictions on poultry imports from countries that have avian influenza outbreaks, South Africa plans to allow the US to determine when it should halt and resume exports.
'What we've done is build a new system of self-ban, self-lift,' Steenhuisen said. 'We hope that this will be seen as a removal of what they've regarded as a trade barrier.'
The minister considered it unlikely the two countries will resolve their difference over South Africa's requirements that glands be removed from pork meat prior to it being sold in the country — a measure intended to avoid the spread of the highly contagious porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome disease.
'They regard that as a trade barrier because they say that that process renders their meat uncompetitive,' Steenhuisen said. 'It's going to be one of those impasses because we cannot compromise our local pork sector.'
South Africa is one of a handful of nations that are free of the disease, and if it were detected it would increase pork production costs as pigs would have to be vaccinated against it, said Peter Evans, the chief executive officer of the South African Pork Producers' Organisation.
'It's a disease we want to keep out of the country,' he said in an interview. The US is 'irked by it. They perceive it as a hindrance to large-scale exports.'
The US also complains that tariffs of about 62% on poultry imports, along with the health requirements, have stopped it from filling its annual quotas of about 70,000 tons of chicken meat that it is permitted to ship into South Africa, according to the agriculture minister.
That levy, along with those imposed on cars and farm equipment, are higher than those charged on products from the European Union, with which South Africa has a trade agreement. The US has, until recently, given a range of South African goods duty-free to its markets under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).
'Their argument is that we are giving you AGOA and all of these things, but you are giving our competitors a better deal,' Steenhuisen said.