Jamie Mackay: The Country host on Beef + Lamb NZ putting case forward at US International Trade Commission

The Rural Report on Heather Duplessy-Allen

Drive. Jamie Mackay, host of The Country's With Us. Hello, Jamie.

Evening, Heather.

So are we sending Kate to the USA?

Well, she's on her way there. In fact, I suspect she might have landed because I'm chatting to her at 9.30 in the morning, which will be what, afternoon, late afternoon, Washington time. So, yep, she's over there to plead our case at a hearing of the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington. The meeting is or the hearing is Saturday morning, our time, and it's all about whether lamb imports, almost all of which come from Australia and New Zealand, are causing or threatening to cause serious injury to US lamb producers. Now, Beef and Lamb New Zealand, Kate leading the charge, will present evidence that imports 99% of them, as I said, come from New Zealand and Australia, will complement or do complement the US sheep industry and are helping meet demand from US consumers that its producers cannot fill. Remember, the total sheep flock in the USA is 5 million, lamb population just 3 million. It's 1% of their total livestock income. They are a cattle country. So what happens is the International Trade Commission has until November the 13th to determine whether injury is taking place. If an injury is proven, the Commission must hold a further hearing on possible remedies by December the 1st. And here's where the trouble begins for us, Heather. If that makes formal recommendations or it then makes formal recommendations to the US president, who has 60 days to decide whether to implement these tariffs or not and we all know what he loves about tariffs he loves implementing them currently we're paying 13.2 percent uh the the uh american sheep industry association wants that tariff rate lifted to 21 so there is there is mind you a very uh short-term uh lining for every cloud, silver lining for this cloud. Exporters over there or importers, American importers are getting pretty nervous and we're getting an increased interest from our United States customers ahead of or in anticipation of possible import restrictions coming off early or coming on early next year.

Hey, so the aquaculture guys, are they going to start targeting India, are they?

Yeah, well, why not? It's one of the world's largest and fastest growing seafood The government wants to quadruple the value of the country's farmed seafood. At the moment, we're only farming about 750 million of that. They want to increase that to 3 billion by 2035. Now, here's an interesting stat for you. Aquaculture New Zealand's annual conference in Nelson on Wednesday was told that Australian seafood exports to India had increased almost 300%. since a partial free trade agreement was signed in 2022. At the same time, our trade to India fell by 67%. If or when this Indian free trade comes into effect next week, where our current 33% tariff on key fish and seafood exports will be phased out over seven years. So it won't be an overnight cure, but it will help. Interestingly, I'm probably out of time here. I was just going to tell you about the big salmon farm at Stewart Island, but I get the feeling you're out of time. You

can go if you want to. I mean,