Spain, E.U. React to U.S. Tariffs on Spanish Olives

The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) has approved new tar­iffs on Spanish olives by a vote of three to one.

Customs author­i­ties will now begin col­lect­ing new tar­iffs approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce on the olives rang­ing from 7.52 per­cent all the way to 27.02 per­cent.

“The USITC today deter­mined that a U.S. indus­try is mate­ri­ally injured by rea­son of imports of ripe olives from Spain that the U.S. Department of Commerce has deter­mined are sub­si­dized and sold in the United States at less than fair value,” a depart­ment spokes­woman said about the deci­sion.

“As a result of the USITC’s affir­ma­tive deter­mi­na­tions, Commerce will issue antidump­ing and coun­ter­vail­ing duty orders on imports of this prod­uct from Spain,” she added.

The European Commission has said in a state­ment that it will wait to see the exact word­ing of the tar­iffs, which will be released on July 24, but that ​“all pos­si­ble options” are on the table, in terms of a response.

“The Commission deplores this US approach and in par­tic­u­lar the way in which the inves­ti­ga­tion was con­ducted,” a European Commission spokesper­son said. ​“These pro­tec­tion­ist mea­sures are not jus­ti­fied, nei­ther on process nor on sub­stance.”

“The deci­sion by the U.S. Department of Commerce to impose unrea­son­ably high and pro­hib­i­tive anti-sub­sidy and anti-dump­ing duties on Spanish olives is sim­ply unac­cept­able,” the spokesper­son added. ​“This is a pro­tec­tion­ist mea­sure tar­get­ing a high-qual­ity and suc­cess­ful EU prod­uct pop­u­lar with US con­sumers.”

The imple­men­ta­tion of the tar­iffs stems from an anti-dump­ing com­plaint lodged by two com­pa­nies in California last year. This was com­pounded by an anti-sub­sidy charge by the Commerce Department.

According to data from the Spanish Association of Exporters and Industrialists of Table Olives (ASEMA), black olive exports to the US have already fallen by more than 42 per­cent in the first quar­ter of 2018 com­pared with the same period in 2017.

Luis Planas, Spain’s Minister of Agriculture, said he plans to bring up the tar­iffs at a European Union agri­cul­tural meet­ing sched­uled for next week in Luxembourg.

José Muñoz, a PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) Deputy in the Andalusian Parliament, has already taken action, propos­ing an ini­tia­tive demand­ing European Union inter­ven­tion on behalf of Spanish olive farm­ers.

“The PSOE in Andalusia presents in the Andalusian Parliament an ini­tia­tive that demands of the European Union a force­ful com­mer­cial answer against the tar­iffs on our table olives,” he said on Twitter.

The Andalusian Parliament is meet­ing today to dis­cuss the ini­tia­tive and the impli­ca­tions of the tar­iffs on the region’s econ­omy. However, it is unclear what exactly the provin­cial gov­ern­ment can do other than peti­tion Brussels to act.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Sánchez Haro, the Andalusian Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development has gone to Madrid to peti­tion the national gov­ern­ment to act.

“Today in Madrid we have met with the Luis Planas, to con­tinue work­ing together in defense of the table olive sec­tor before the unfair and unjus­ti­fied tar­iffs defin­i­tively estab­lished by the US,” he said.

• Reuters


• The Olive Press