CFA urges the government to oppose China's trade restrictions

Introduction: the U.S Food and Feed Association is urging the Bush administration to mobilize other food exporting countries in the world to oppose China's trade restrictions, which, in the association's words, "have effectively brought soybean export to China to a standstill." The restrictions imposed by the Chinese government in the past 19 months are ostensibly aimed at health and quarantine issues, but are in fact against China's WTO commitments, the association said The Chinese government has also set up "numerous requirements on how and with whom to trade, which also violates the rules based WTO system," the association said In particular, the association criticized China's regulations restricting agricultural trade, especially soybean trade, on the grounds that some opaque and arbitrary quarantine regulations were not notified before implementation, so there was no opportunity to review or evaluate them The association said that the Chinese government also implemented new additional standards for the import of all agricultural and animal husbandry products, and ignored the international origin sampling inspection procedures and commercial contract terms Not only that, China has blacklisted some companies from trading partners In early July, the North American export Grain Association, the American oilseed Processors Association, and four peer organizations in Argentina and Brazil launched a national initiative to urge their respective governments to work together to eliminate trade restrictions imposed by China, which was strongly supported by the American food and Feed Association.