Chinese Tariffs Wipe Out U.S. Chicken Exports

The Chinese government spent more than $30 billion last year alone to subsidize the nation’s solar energy industry, allowing Chinese firms to dump cheap solar panels on the U.S. market and send their American competitors into bankruptcy.

But at the same time, China is accusing the United States of dumping and is slapping prohibitive tariffs on the product of an industry that employs some 300,000 Americans — chickens.

The United States has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization claiming that China violated international trade rules when it imposed tariffs as high as 100 percent on American chicken exports, doubling the price of American chickens in the world’s most populous nation.

“U.S. trade officials say that the tariffs have hit the U.S. poultry industry to the tune of between $500 million and $1 billion, with 90 percent of poultry sales to China wiped out,” CNN reported.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce imposed the poultry tariffs in September 2010, claiming American chicken producers benefited from subsidies and were exporting their goods to China at unfairly low prices.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said: “We continue to believe a two-way trade can work for the American people when we insist that China lives by its commitments, and maintains a level playing field for American producers to compete for Chinese consumers.”

Critics charge that China is itself guilty of dumping by enabling its firms to sell solar panels at prices American firms cannot match. State-owned Chinese banks offer firms loans at very low rates, and the companies benefit from cheap or free land from local and provincial governments across China, according to The New York Times.

In the first seven months of this year, China reportedly shipped $1.4 billion worth of solar panels to the United States, more than the $1.2 billion it sent in all of last year.

The collapse in September of Solyndra, a California manufacturer of solar panels that had $535 million in U.S. loan guarantees, has boosted demands from American lawmakers that the Obama administration pursue unfair-trade complaints against China.

Besides Solyndra, two other American solar-panel makers filed for bankruptcy in August.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at a hearing last month: “It is reasonable to predict that we could have the collapse of the entire solar panel manufacturing business in America.”

No such threat looms for China’s chicken industry.