December 18, 2006

US pork producers welcome PNTR with Vietnam

The US National Pork Producers Council lavished praise on the congressional approval of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status for Vietnam passed last week.

The House and Senate passed the trade deal late Friday and early Saturday, respectively.

With PNTR, US exporters can take advantage of Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization to export more products to the nations at lower tariff rates. Tariff rates for about 75 percent of US agricultural exports to Vietnam, including pork, would fall to WTO-bound duty rates of 15 percent or less.

Tariffs on pork variety meats, popular in Vietnam, will decline from a rate of 20 percent to 8 percent over four years. Tariffs on most other pork products would be halved in five years.

Granting PNTR to Vietnam means the US pork industry would be able to ship more product to that nation, said NPPC President Joy Philippi, a pork producer from Bruning, Neb.

This would benefit access to a market of 84 million people, where pork represents 72 percent of meat consumption.

According to Iowa State University economist Dermot Hayes, the Vietnamese accession deal would increase US pork variety meat exports to the Southeast Asian nation to US$16.5 million by 2012 from US$3.3 million in 2004.

Vietnam improved its implementation of WTO rules on sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures and agreed to recognise the US inspection system for pork as one equivalent to its own inspection system.

Also, the US would be able to settle trade disputes with Vietnam through the WTO should the country not live up to any of its obligations.