WASHINGTON – Japan has lifted restrictions on U.S. beef imports, ending a partial embargo stemming from a 2003 mad cow disease outbreak, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced earlier this month.
American cattle over the age of 30 months had been banned from Japanese markets under the trade restriction. While Japan still imposes a tariff on American beef imports, the age limit has been lifted.
“Any time we can open a foreign market and get better access, that’s very helpful,” said Tom Compton, a cattle rancher in Breen who used to serve as president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association.
Compton generally sells his cattle to a feedlot or packing plant, which prepares them to be sold to consumers in domestic or foreign markets. He does not plan to sell cattle directly to Japanese markets, but said he may benefit from the agreement.
With the higher demand, he said, “the beef we produce is going to be worth more money.”
Colorado exported $372 million in beef and veal in 2017, making it one of the state’s top agricultural exports, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Carlyle Currier, who is a cattle rancher in Molina and vice president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, said the U.S. beef producers are not at a level playing field with other beef exporters in the Pacific region.
“That’s because of TPP. That put us at a real disadvantage,” Currier said in a phone interview. “And you add the tariff on top of that, and it makes it really hard to compete with competitor countries like Australia and New Zealand.”
TPP, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is a comprehensive trade agreement between 11 Pacific Rim countries. As part of that agreement, Australia and New Zealand pay a 27.5% tariff on beef exports to Japan, while the U.S. pays a 38.5% tariff. The U.S. was originally part of TPP until President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2017.
The new agreement with Japan comes at a time when American farmers and ranchers are struggling to cope with the trade war that has caused tariffs on agricultural exports to China.
On Thursday, Trump announced a $16 billion bailout for farmers affected by the dispute, which started over U.S. claims of intellectual property rights abuses by China. It is the second such bailout since the dispute began.
Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy, said in an interview with The Durango Herald that he helped negotiate the deal with Japan to ease restrictions on U.S. beef imports.
Gardner said he favors including regional allies in a cooperative approach to trade negotiations and called Trump’s use of tariffs “a tax on American consumers.”
“We’re getting there, as Mr. Currier said, opening it to a broader range of U.S. beef exports,” Gardner said. “We still have work to do on the tariff side.”
An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect amount for the bailout being provided to U.S. farmers affected by the tariffs.