Visitors checking a cutting demonstration and tasting on Australia’s stand at Shanghai’s SIAL food trade show last week

VIGOROUS beef export sales into China in recent months has elevated the likelihood of Australia triggering its 2025 Safeguard tariff mechanism for the market, as early as late July or August.

The Safeguard tariff is a mechanism used in a number of Australian beef importing countries where free trade agreements apply, including Korea, the United States and China. It is designed to help protect the local cattle industries from unusually large rises in imports, year-to-year.

China’s General Administration of Customs (GACC) on Monday announced the country’s 2025 Safeguard tariff level for Australian beef, setting the volume at 208,300 tonnes. However the actual trigger level amount available this year is slightly less than 191,000t, once carry-over product from 2024 is included.

Once the threshold is reached, a Most-Favored Nation tariff of 12pc will be imposed on Australian beef imports (some items higher, depending on the product’s Harmonised System code).

Last year, the carry-over safeguard figure was lower, at 178,000t, but the Safeguard trigger was reached much later in the year during October, leaving only a shorter period exposed to the 12pc tariff for the remainder of 2024.

As trade has grown this year, China took 21,572t of Australian beef in April, 30pc higher than the same month last year. Year-to-date, exports to China are now at 78,116t, up 27pc on last year.

With the withdrawal of US product since the reciprocal tariffs move by US president Trump, Australia’s May exports to China could easily top 25,000 tonnes, trade sources suggest (full May figures available early next week).

As Beef Central pointed out in this article published during Shanghai’s huge SIAL trade show last week, Australian beef sales during SIAL were described as ‘brisk’ and remained robust this week, according to commodity reporting service Expana (recently renamed from its previous well-known identity as Urner Barry).

Part of that is being driven by anticipation now being seen among Chinese importers that the cost of Australian beef will rise by 12pc when the Safeguard is triggered, some time in the months ahead.

Regular triggering

The Safeguard mechanism was negotiated back in 2015 as part of the China Australia Free Trade Agreement, and has triggered at least five times since then as exports have dramatically expanded.

A decade ago when the FTA agreement was struck, it was never foreseen that Australia’s beef exports into China would take off as they have. Australia first triggered the limit in 2018, again in 2019 and 2020, and most recently in late 2023 and 2024.

The absence of US beef entering the Chinese market this year (as a consequence of the current 45pc reciprocal tariff, the increasingly smaller rates of US beef production and the current stand-off by the Chinese in re-licensing almost 400 US beef plants) has pressured export volumes out of Australia, Brazil and other global suppliers.

China’s imports of Australian beef are tracking well above seasonal norms, Expana said in a report yesterday, as Australian grainfed product is fast filling the gap left by US beef amid a deepening Sino-US trade precipice that saw 390 American plants delisted and steep retaliatory tariffs imposed.

“With volumes rapidly nearing the 2025 trigger, industry attention is turning to the likelihood of an earlier safeguard activation as early as July,” Expana suggested.