Soon after the United States Meat Export Federation Spring Conference in Fort Worth, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays, caught up with the organization’s president and CEO, Dan Halstrom, and talked about the conference, which was attended by many world leaders in meat exports, and some highlights.
When considering the uncertainty around tariffs and trade in general, Halstrom said that meat exports have done considerably well. Last year was the third-largest export year for beef, and this year, so far, is steady with a year ago.
“When you consider, especially what is going on in Asia, I think we are pretty happy with that,” Halstrom stated. “On the beef side, that is one really big plus!”
Pork is slightly above the record pace that it was on at this time last year, which was a record year for pork exports.
While those are positive takeaways from the conference, Halstrom explained that the concerns are what the April Meat Export Report, due later this week, will hold because it will show the impact of the conflict with China.
“We are going to see the numbers for China come way off for April,” he said. “To what extent will the rest of the world pick up the slack is really one of the big questions.”
In trade with China, the tariff rollercoaster is extreme, but even more so with beef. “On beef, we started out the year with a 12 percent duty going into China, then we went up to 147 percent in April, and in essence, shut off the business, and then it dropped back down to 32 percent,” Halstrom explained.
He said that business can go on at 32 percent, but the problem with beef is that the majority, roughly 400, of the U.S. beef processing plants were not relisted to eligible plant status in China’s cipher system.
“This was the number one hurdle that was discussed last week,” Halstrom said. “It doesn’t matter what the tariffs are if our establishments aren’t listed. The goal is to, hopefully, get these beef plants relisted as soon as possible.”
Officials at USTR, USDA, and FAS Post in China are working hard to find a solution. “As you can imagine, with all of the moving parts in China, this is probably one of many things at the tops of their lists, but as far as the beef industry is concerned, this is number one,” Halstrom commented.
The ongoing focus for the team at USMEF is to continually diversify export markets. “We’re not nearly as reliant on variety meats for beef, only five or six percent of our variety meats go to China, but there is a substantial amount of muscle cuts – $1.5 billion worth last year – so trying to relocate that product within Asia is the key,” Halstrom said.
Beef short plates are a perfect example. The industry has already refocused them into other markets such as Korea and Japan.
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