An earthquake is currently wreaking havoc on the entire Spanish meat industry. A week after the European Commission approved new tariffs on Chinese electric cars, Beijing took action by announcing an investigation into European pork, mainly affecting Spain.

This also happened a few years ago in the conflict with the USA during the Trump Era: whenever Europe gets into a “trade war”, Spain suffers ‘collateral damage’.

What happened? After months of investigating the issue of “subsidies for electric vehicles from China”, the European Commission last week approved a set of temporary tariffs that will come into force from July and will significantly change the playing field amid the debate over the future of the European automotive sector. industry. And ‘largely’ is no exaggeration: we’re talking tariffs ranging from 17% to 38%.

Everyone knew that China would take action, and as we explained in Xataka, Spain (along with France) played an important role in these tariffs. What no one knew for sure was what consequences this would have.

This mystery has just been solved. Because Beijing has announced that it will open an anti-dumping investigation (i.e. the same kind that the Commission has implemented for its cars) affecting European pork and all its by-products. This is a warning to sailors that mainly affects the Netherlands, Denmark and of course Spain.

Although, as far as we know, this has been in development for several months, the temporal coincidence leaves no room for doubt. The investigation will affect all pork intended for human consumption (fresh or frozen cuts, as well as all types of offal). According to Reuters, it will start on June 17 and may cause great damage to our country.

Tension in Spain. Although the European Union said that the investigation would ensure compliance with World Trade Organization standards, China’s statements caused an earthquake in Spain, which wanted to do everything possible to avoid the customs duty on meat. .

And this is completely understandable. Spain is not only the largest exporter of pork to China in all of Europe; The world’s largest exporter is China, ahead of the USA and Brazil. Approximately 23% of China’s imported pork leaves Spain: approximately $2 billion.

Almost 2,000 million make this Asian giant the main buyer of our pork exports. This logically puts Spain in a very complicated situation.

Image | Javier Abalos | /Richard

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