U.S. meat works tries for clamp on lamb

Press, 30 March 1985, Page 13

U.S. meat works tries for clamp on lamb

From HUGH NEVILL NZPA staff correspondent Washington An American meat works leapt for New Zealand’s jugular this week, resubmitting a petition for penal duties on imports of New Zealand lamb. The trade, about 14,000 tonnes annually, is worth $4O million a year. This time the petitioner, the California-based American Lamb Company, will merely have to prove that the lamb is produced with the aid of Government subsidies. The move comes ahead of the official gazetting of the Administration’s decision to withdraw New Zealand’s protection under the “injury test.” That protection will disappear from April 1. Official notice of withdrawal has not yet appeared in the Federal Register, but the United States Embassy in Wellington has given the Government a copy of a letter the Administration sent to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G.A.T.T.) detailing its belief that New Zealand is not in compliance with the G.A.T.T. subsidies code.

That — the fact that New Zealand has not yet phased out all subsidies to farmers — is the basis of withdrawal of the “injury test.” The Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore, dashed to Washington earlier this month to plead for an extension, but was turned down. The American Lamb Company led a bid last year to have America’s International Trade Commission impose penal tariffs on New Zealand lamb. Because the “injury test” was in force then, the petitioners had to prove not only that the New Zealand

£*P b "J 8 produced with the aid of Government subsidies but also that the imports were hurting their sales. They charged that the New Zealand Lamb Company (Devco’s North American subsidiary) was swamping target markets with cheap lamb legs and depressing American prices, but the I.T.C. found they had not proved their case and dismissed the petition. The petitioners appealed the decision to the Court of International Trade in New York, which has yet to rule. A similar case was brought in 1981, when a

preliminary countervailing duty of 6.19 per cent was imposed. That was cancelled after the American groups withdrew their petition as a result of private agreements on marketing and generic promotion. During last year’s hearings an American lawyer, Robert Wray, said those agreements included an undertaking that New Zealand would not export chilled lamb to the United States. He accused New Zealand then of “persistent, consistent, enormous underselling” in America.