Chinese people love pork. They ate about 57 million metric tons of pork last year — just over half of the global total — and the pork section at Xinfadi, Beijing’s largest wholesale market, is so huge it occupies its own building.
The air in the hall here is thick with the sickly sweet smell of flesh and the thunk of heavy metal choppers cleaving ribs and trimming fat.
Pork is so rooted in Chinese culture, cuisine and language that the Chinese character for home or family is a pig under a roof, and the word for meat — rou — is generally understood to mean pork. Guaranteeing supply of the meat is so politically important that the Chinese Communist Party even manages a “strategic pork reserve” to see the country through lean times.
So it might, at first glance, appear surprising that Beijing slapped a 10 percent tariff on American pork during its last round of actions to retaliate against President Donald Trump’s duties on everything China exports to the United States, moves that economists say could raise the costs of everyday goods in the United States.
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Because China does not buy anywhere near as much as it sells to the United States, Beijing has had to create ways to pressure Trump without incurring major costs at home.
Follow Trump’s first 100 Days
Targeting American farm products is a key part of Beijing’s response. It put 10-15 percent tariffs on $21 billion of American imports, including pork, chicken, soybeans and other farming goods predominantly produced in rural areas of the United States that voted Republican in the last election, including Iowa, North Carolina and Missouri. China was the third largest importer of American pork last year after Japan and Mexico.
But despite the fondness for pork, the tariffs on American pork will inflict relatively little pain on China. That’s because Beijing has made headway in curbing reliance on American pork and creating an imbalance that works in its favor.
The $1.1 billion worth of pork that China bought from the United States last year amounted to a mere 7 percent of its imports and 0.1 percent of total supply.
Butchers at Xinfadi brushed aside the possibility that tariffs will damage business. “We only sell domestically produced pork,” said Zhang Haifu, as she placed freshly cut trotters out for display. “Trade tensions have nothing to do with us.”
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In the pork section of Xinfadi, a big electronic board hangs by the entrance flashing the prices of the 1,795 hogs available today — around $1 per pound — next to a column noting the farm location.
Demand here extends to the whole pig. Ears, tripe, trotters and other assorted offal are often considered delicacies in China, creating a sizable market for imports from innards-averse countries like the United States. About 25 percent — or 322,000 metric tons last year — of swine offal imported into China comes from the United States.
“No alternative market can approach this volume at the price Chinese buyers pay,” the U.S. Meat Export Federation said in a recent update.
Chinese authorities are betting that farmers in countries like Brazil and Spain will be more than happy to serve up extra swine to the world’s biggest market.
Beijing has worked hard since the trade war of Trump’s first term to make sure imports of American farm goods are not central to its supply, including by boosting domestic pork production, which makes up 97 percent of the Chinese market.
This effort to be self-sufficient was complicated by an outbreak of swine fever in 2018, which helped U.S. imports hit a record in 2020.
The air in the hall here is thick with the sickly sweet smell of flesh and the thunk of heavy metal choppers cleaving ribs and trimming fat.
Pork is so rooted in Chinese culture, cuisine and language that the Chinese character for home or family is a pig under a roof, and the word for meat — rou — is generally understood to mean pork. Guaranteeing supply of the meat is so politically important that the Chinese Communist Party even manages a “strategic pork reserve” to see the country through lean times.
So it might, at first glance, appear surprising that Beijing slapped a 10 percent tariff on American pork during its last round of actions to retaliate against President Donald Trump’s duties on everything China exports to the United States, moves that economists say could raise the costs of everyday goods in the United States.
Advertisement
Because China does not buy anywhere near as much as it sells to the United States, Beijing has had to create ways to pressure Trump without incurring major costs at home.
Follow Trump’s first 100 Days
Targeting American farm products is a key part of Beijing’s response. It put 10-15 percent tariffs on $21 billion of American imports, including pork, chicken, soybeans and other farming goods predominantly produced in rural areas of the United States that voted Republican in the last election, including Iowa, North Carolina and Missouri. China was the third largest importer of American pork last year after Japan and Mexico.
But despite the fondness for pork, the tariffs on American pork will inflict relatively little pain on China. That’s because Beijing has made headway in curbing reliance on American pork and creating an imbalance that works in its favor.
The $1.1 billion worth of pork that China bought from the United States last year amounted to a mere 7 percent of its imports and 0.1 percent of total supply.
Butchers at Xinfadi brushed aside the possibility that tariffs will damage business. “We only sell domestically produced pork,” said Zhang Haifu, as she placed freshly cut trotters out for display. “Trade tensions have nothing to do with us.”
Advertisement
In the pork section of Xinfadi, a big electronic board hangs by the entrance flashing the prices of the 1,795 hogs available today — around $1 per pound — next to a column noting the farm location.
Demand here extends to the whole pig. Ears, tripe, trotters and other assorted offal are often considered delicacies in China, creating a sizable market for imports from innards-averse countries like the United States. About 25 percent — or 322,000 metric tons last year — of swine offal imported into China comes from the United States.
“No alternative market can approach this volume at the price Chinese buyers pay,” the U.S. Meat Export Federation said in a recent update.
Chinese authorities are betting that farmers in countries like Brazil and Spain will be more than happy to serve up extra swine to the world’s biggest market.
Beijing has worked hard since the trade war of Trump’s first term to make sure imports of American farm goods are not central to its supply, including by boosting domestic pork production, which makes up 97 percent of the Chinese market.
This effort to be self-sufficient was complicated by an outbreak of swine fever in 2018, which helped U.S. imports hit a record in 2020.
