US citrus: No help from Phase One trade deal

Talking Turkey

The trade scuffles of 2019 have seen China retreat from the U.S. citrus marketplace, after China imposed a 20% tariff on the fruit, and, as the dispute escalated, taking it to 60% and then 70%, resulting in plummeting prices and lost revenues. U.S. citrus is now losing market share to Chile, South Africa, Australia, Egypt, and Turkey.

Turkey in particular is making a big push to export more kinds of fruits and vegetables to China by negotiating relaxed import protocols with the Chinese government. In 2019, Turkish exporters succeeded in obtaining revisions to the Chinese import protocol for cherries, removing a 16-day cold treatment requirement. As of the end of August 2019, Turkey had exported 80,000 tons of cherries worth $183 million to China. The year before, Turkish exports of the fruit to China totaled $27,000. In the past five years, Turkey more than doubled its revenue from hazelnut exports to China to $87.1 million in 2019, according to the Mediterranean Exporters Association of Turkey.

The Turkish Ministry of Commerce recently published a list of food products, reflecting priorities for adding to exports to China, and citrus fruits were number one. Turkey’s relatively close proximity to China “makes citrus fruit the most likely product to increase exports to China,” according to the exporters association.

Turkey currently has no citrus exports to China because China’s import protocol prevents the fruits from remaining fresh, according to the group. But Turkey’s success with cherries augurs well for that county’s citrus exporters as well.

In his recent annual State of the Port speech, Mario Cordero, executive director of the Port of Long Beach, predicted that the Phase One agreement between the U.S. and China will bring more U.S. agricultural exports to the port. That may very well be the case, but the way things look now, increased citrus exports to China don’t appear to be in the cards.