A senior member of Donald Trump’s cabinet has blasted ‘s biosecurity rules after the Americans slapped 10 per cent tariffs on .
Billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said ‘s quarantining system amounted to a barrier to American beef exporters.
‘Our farmers are blocked from selling almost anywhere – 1.4billion people in India and we can’t sell them corn; Europe won’t let us sell beef; won’t let us sell beef,’ he told CNN.
, like the US, has biosecurity rules to keep out disease.
But Mr Lutnick, who advised Trump on trade policy, argued this amounted to protectionism.
‘They want to just protect, they want to say, “Oh, what, the seeds are different”,’ he said.
‘C’mon, this is nonsense; this is all nonsense. What happens is they block our markets – when we opened those markets, our volumes grow, our farmers will thrive and the price of groceries will come down.’
Beef, ‘s biggest export to the United States in 2024, now incurs a 10 per cent tariff, even though the Americans had been importing a product they had struggled to produce themselves.
The US is battling a drought, which has diminished cattle herds and restricted beef production to the fattier, grain-fed variety.
‘s superior grass-fed beef is needed to make hamburgers.
That kind of meat making up 96 per cent of ‘s exports to the US last year.
Imposing a tariff on n beef exports would be more likely to push up food prices in the United States rather than bring prices down, if their local supply is diminished.