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Latest on Chinese anti-dumping investigation of U.S. DDG’s

The director of industry relations for the U.S. Grains Council says a decision on the Chinese anti-dumping and countervailing investigation of US. Dried Distillers Grains could be coming soon.

China’s Ministry of Commerce launched a probe on U.S. DDG imports in January after complaints from Chinese producers that the livestock feed ingredient was sold at prices below normal value, which the Ministry says hurt that country’s domestic industry.

Lyndsey Erb tells Brownfield a preliminary determination in cases like this typically comes within six to eight months.

“Six to eight months is very reasonable in the timeline to assume a preliminary duty.  A preliminary duty is likely to be imposed on producers, which would require a level of traceability back to the individual plant.”

She says USGC wants both the U.S. and China to understand the long-term consequences.

“While China is managing an internal supply of their own corn, we want to ensure that this short-term problem isn’t solved with a much longer-term solution, being limited or strained access to that market over five to fifteen years.”

China, the world’s largest buyer of distllers grains, also performed an anti-dumping investigation of U.S. DDG’s in 2010.

That probe was dropped two years later.

Brownfield spoke to Erb during the American Coalition for Ethanol Conference in Minneapolis.