USW Submits Trade Barriers Report with Additional Detail on China and India
By Dalton Henry, USW Vice President of Policy
Each year, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) compiles and publishes the National Trade Estimates (NTE) report — a comprehensive report detailing barriers that U.S. exporters, including wheat farmers, face in markets around the world.
The first step in compiling the massive report (last year’s came in at 537 pages), is to collect feedback from the export stakeholders. U.S. Wheat Associates (USW) participates in this process each year by consulting with our offices overseas, talking to customers and researching trade barriers. That work culminated last week when USW submitted to USTR its compiled information, covering barriers in a dozen wheat importing countries.
Each year, many of the challenges highlighted in USW’s submission are issues that remain unresolved. This year, however, USW’s reports about on-going concerns with China and India were substantially changed.
The new report on barriers in China reflect the progress made since last year to bring China’s wheat import tariff rate quota (TRQ) and wheat subsidy policies into compliance with the government’s WTO commitments. This year’s report reflects the progress made in those areas as a result of the two WTO cases the United States won last spring, and China’s initial policy proposals to address those WTO rulings.
While the report shows some progress in the China section, it highlights a growing area of concern in India. India runs subsidy programs very similar to China, including minimum purchase prices and input subsidies. USW and USTR have demonstrated previously that India is well outside of its WTO limits in the level of government subsidies. Those subsidies have spurred excess production and subsequent wheat stocks that, once at a critical mass, India must subsidize to dump onto the world market. USDA projects that Indian wheat ending stocks will exceed 20 million metric tons (MMT) for 2019/20 — a level that historical data shows will likely result in India resuming wheat exports in the near future.
USW’s most recent NTE report can be found online here. It provides an overview of the key issues that USW works on every year and supplies USTR with up-to-date information on ongoing problems in wheat trade. In doing so, it fills a vital role in the enforcement of trade rules, something that U.S. farmers and their customers overseas want to see more than ever.
