Kate Acland: Beef & Lamb New Zealand Chair on Trump's reversing tariffs

The New Zealand beef sector's set to save some dosh, with the removal of the additional 15-percent tariff on our beef.

US President Donald Trump's reversed his tariffs on a wide range of US food imports, including New Zealand beef, offal and kiwifruit.

These products represent around 25 per cent of our exports to the United States, worth more than two billion dollars annually.

Beef & Lamb New Zealand Chair Kate Acland told Ryan Bridge the tariffs were costing our beef industry a lot.

She says in 12 months the quotas were looking to cost us about 310-million dollars, so it's a significant amount.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This youtune from Trump on beef tariff, so scrap them.
Basically great for US red meat. Here we for a
quarter of everything. We sing to the US two billion
dollars worth of our ex sports joining us. Kate Ackland
beef and leaf a beef and lamb chair with us. Cate,
good morning morning. Now has this happened already has officially
taken place?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
We are still trying to sort through the details on that.
I mean it's sort of a corner sat by surprise actually,
I mean it shows a week for long time in politics,
so not quite certain exactly when this comes into effect.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Does it just level the playing field? Right, It's not
special treatment for us specifically, it's for everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
So it's removing additional terraffs across all beef from all countries.
So fortunately New Zealand does have really good access for beef,
so breathe of tariffs. You know, we've got a really
large quota with an end quota teriff rate of less
than one percent, So as sorry as New Zealand goes,
this puts US in a very very strong position.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
How much did we lose or pay and how much
do we pay in terrists? How much business did we
lose during this periods ince April?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
So in twelve months, the quotas we're looking to cost
US at about three hundred and ten million dollars off
a base of virtually nothing, So it's a significant amount
of money.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
So what do you think will happen now or well,
I mean, did we lose much market share in the
in the intervening months and will we get it just
get it all back now or what?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Look, it wasn't so much about losing market share because
everyone was impacted. We were impacted more than the Australians
or the Argentine but then there were some countries like
Brazil that were facing bigger tariffs than US. But what
we did see is quite a volume of met went
away from the US into other markets. Now the US
is a really high value market for US, so it
will be really interesting to see how those trade floaws go,

(01:53):
you know, whether we see less products going into markets
like China and more back to the USA.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Because do we get more money for it here.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Here? We do? So there is really high value market
for both beef and lamb. Now obviously we've still got
the tariffs on lamb, but.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Great market, but random a cap.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
I look completely completely random, and I guess you know.
Although we're really positive about it, we are being quite
cautious as well, because it just sort of shows that
things can change overnight.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed
and then before you know it, it's all back on Kate.
Thank you, Kate, Cate from Beef and Lamb. For more
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