Reacting to the news that China is looking at dairy products it deems to be in receipt of state funding and acting against what it perceives as their ‘dumping’ in their domestic market, the President of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, said that “yet again” Irish dairy products might end up as ‘collateral damage’ in a trade war that was most assuredly not of their own making.
Mr Drennan said that the idea that, for instance, Irish butter or powders were in any fashion the beneficiaries of state support or funding would be comical if the situation was not serious.
“I think if you suggested to an Irish dairy farmer that he was in receipt of state funding towards the retail price of his product, he or she would laugh in your face. If anything, the Irish Government’s policies work as a penalty in our sector and so far from aiding they actually deduct from our ability to sell successfully abroad,” said the ICMSA President.
Mr Drennan noted that the Chinese action was being attributed to their anger over EU tariffs on Chinese-made EVs and he bemoaned the fact that Irish food exports were being ‘held hostage’ in a dispute that was not even tangentially related to our sector or process. He said that the loss – or any kind of negative impact – of exports worth more than €450 million would be a savage blow at a time when our primary dairy-farmer producers were “reeling” from low prices, adverse weather and years of high inputs.
“We have to be blunt here: We need this like the proverbial ‘hole-in-the-head’ and if the EU is going to embark on a trade dispute that wipes out our powder and butter trade with China then ICMSA will be demanding that the EU compensate the farmers who you can be absolutely sure will be the ones who end up paying the cost of a trade dispute that we had nothing to do with and resolution of which is completely outside our control,” said the ICMSA President.
