China Wheat Import Ban Called Unfair

U.S. farmers headed to Beijing Wednesday to highlight another front in the U.S.-China trade dispute - China’s ban on wheat imports from the Pacific Northwest.

The wheat industry delegation was armed with a letter signed by 30 U.S. senators to Chinese Premier Li Peng, accusing the Chinese of applying regulations “in a discriminatory manner.”

“China’s refusal to cooperate with the U.S. government in working for a practical solution to resolve the TCK issue is forcing us to lose patience,” they wrote.

TCK is a fungus common in northerly wheat crops. China has banned the import of wheat with TCK since 1973. The growers say the fungus is harmless, and no other country has a problem importing it.

“This is not a technical issue. The Chinese have not been able to substantiate or document the science upon which they base their premise that TCK is a threat to their domestic wheat production,” James Walesby, chairman of the Washington Wheat omission, said at a news conference before he and two fellow Northwest wheat growers flew to Beijing.

He said the Pacific Northwest, which accounts for 40 percent of U.S. wheat exports, is losing 500,000 to 1 million metric tons of sales annually because of the Chinese policy.

This year, the wheat is fetching up to $260 a ton, so that the lost sales could be above $200 million, they said.

However, the group took a moderate stance, avoiding the confrontational language that occasionally enters into other contentious areas of U.S.-Chinese relations - human rights, copyright piracy and trade barriers.

Instead, they played up the advantages of buying their wheat - five different strains, a reliable year-round supply, and shipping costs cheaper by $7 to $15 a metric ton than other U.S. ports from which China imports wheat.

They noted that wheat farmers were strong supporters of Most Favored Nation status for China - a category which human rights campaigners would like to use as a lever against Beijing.

Chuck Merja, vice president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, blamed bureaucratic paralysis for the 22-year-old ban., “It’s become institutionalized, that’s the problem. There’s just inertia there that has caused this thing to go on and on,” he said.

Challenging China’s scientific grounds for the ban, Walesby said: “It almost gets down to the definition of sound science, and we always end up at a stalemate.”