China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced a massive 55-percent tariff on beef imports from Brazil, which is nominally a partner in the China-dominated BRICS economic bloc.
\n\nMOFCOM said the tariff was imposed because Brazilian beef had reached 100 percent of its import quota under China’s “beef safeguard measure.”
\n\nAlthough its name implies some sort of health and safety legislation, the “beef Safeguard measure” is a nakedly protectionist scheme that was announced in 2025, took effect on January 1, 2026, and will last until December 31, 2028. The policy was explicitly intended to protect Chinese agribusiness from foreign competition by setting a quota for how much beef every other country is allowed to export to China.
\n\nMOFCOM made a show of cutting “developing nations” some slack by offering up to a one-year grace period when the “beef safeguard measure” was announced in 2025 but, in the event, Brazil was given no such lenient treatment. The higher tariff rate kicked in precisely three days after Brazil hit its cap of 1.1 million metric tons of beef exports to China.
\n\nChina was already collecting a 12-percent import tariff on Brazilian beef, so the effective new tariff rate will be 67 percent. Analysts expected…
Original source: https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/
