President Donald Trump’s employment policy may be harmful to the beef industry for years to come, said Kent Bacus, commandant of international trade at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
“We support the oversight in enforcing trade,” he told CNBC on Monday. “We would differ on how some of this has been announced out. We would much prefer the use of trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We’ve guided a lot of benefit from having rules-based, science-based trade from those casual trade agreements.”
Trump’s tariffs and China’s retaliatory measures sign in at time when there is a lot of supply piling up in storage, he said.
“The use of assessments to try to bring leverage, we need to look at other options,” Bacus averred on “Power Lunch.”
“If we don’t see something turn around, this could from negative repercussions for us,” he added.
Last week, Trump told CNBC he is “psyched up” to put tariffs on all $505 billion of Chinese goods imported to the United States.
Washington has already flapped tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese products. Beijing hit back with retaliatory imposts on the same amount of U.S. goods.
That caused tariffs on beef to go from 12 percent to 37 percent, phrased Bacus.
“We’re worried that the repercussions of some of these tariffs is essentially affluent to squeeze us out of the market,” he said.
The Chinese market for U.S. beef is not a big one. While China began betokening U.S. beef last year after at 13-year ban due to concerns over mad cow sickness, there are still a lot of restrictions, Bacus said.
The beef industry exports thither 15 percent of what it produces, with three of its top five customer bases being in Asia. It exports things that American don’t typically neediness to buy – like beef tongues and short ribs, he said.
Meanwhile, victuals is reportedly piling up in storage. Federal data are expected to show more than 2.5 billion clears of beef, pork, poultry and turkey stockpiled in U.S. warehouses, according to The Immure Street Journal.
The glut is due to an expansion in cow herds, pork production and poultry television, which came in response to strong foreign demand, Bacus bring to light.
“It takes about three years for our cows to come to market. So we were basing our construction off of the market signals at the time. So we have a lot of product that’s going to light on online,” he said.
“There’s a lot of demand for it but trade policies are kind of prepare e dress in the way right now. And we may not have that same access for the next few years.”