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China remains below previous dairy import levels

A market expert says this week’s Global Dairy Trade event again showed China is not buying many dairy products right now.   

Katie Burgess with Ever.ag tells Brownfield there are multiple reasons.  “Domestic demand in China has still been pretty rough. They are making more milk internally, so that helps them from a supply perspective.” 

Burgess also says another reason for the small export numbers to China is their current inventory.  “China has big stocks of dairy products yet sitting there, and so we don’t necessarily see a big resurgence in their buying anytime soon.” 

Burgess says changes in trade and tariff incentives are also hurting U.S. dairy exports to China at this time of year.  “They used to have preferential tariffs at the beginning of the year meaning they had to buy a lot of product in January and February to get better tariff rates. Now, those tariff rates are consistent across the year, so they’re not necessarily incentivized to buy a lot in the beginning of the year like they were in the past.” 

She says China’s dairy demand has been down since the pandemic.