July 23, 2018

All Chinese seafood exports to US subject to planned additional 10% tariff

The additional 10% tariff that the US announced it planned to impose on $200 billion worth of imported goods from China includes all of the country's Chinese seafood imports, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA).

The proposed list encompasses both aquacultured and wild-caught seafood products, as well as seafood products that are further processed in China, SSA said.

Last year, the US imported around $2.7 billion worth of Chinese seafood.

The US Trade Representative's (USTR) lengthy list of products encompasses 6,031 tariff subheadings, proposed to be subject to the additional 10% tariffs effective this September.

"The list of products released by the USTR appears to include tariff subheadings covering all of this country's imports of Chinese seafood", SSA said in a recent news release.

The USTR explained that the $200 billion worth of goods to be covered by additional tariffs represented less than half of the $505-billion imports from China last year, but were considerably in excess of the $130 billion in US goods exported to China in 2017.

Although China has retaliated against the US' initial action to impose an additional 25% tariff on $34 billion worth of Chinese imports, because of the massive trade deficit between the two countries, China simply does not import enough goods from the US to retaliate against a similar scope of imports.