Wheat Group Says Section 302 Proposal to Costly for Wheat Exports

Dalton Henry, Vice President of Policy for US Wheat Associates, has been closely tracking developments related to Section 301 including concerns over Chinese built ships entering US ports and the potential fines now being proposed by the Trump administration.

“There's nothing that we can do today to help make that bigger picture, more US ships, more US flagships a reality. And so where these port fees would really come in, it'd be incredibly damaging, right? A million and a half dollars, not just on a Chinese built vessel, but on any vessel from a fleet that contains Chinese vessels, which is the vast majority of the world's global grain trade fleet, not much of a way around it, if these port fees would be put into effect, and the impact from that would be an increase in the neighborhood of 15 To $25 per ton of us, wheat, which just frankly, would knock us out of a lot of export markets around the globe.”

“ Henry states that the goals can be met without spillover effects on the agriculture industry. These core proposals, I think in an ideal scenario, we'd say this. USTR investigation has done a really good job of highlighting the challenges that American shipyards face.”

One alternative, according to Dalton, would be domestic incentives.