First it was bird flu — now, any chance for Georgia poultry to recover market share in China could be stymied even further by the ongoing trade war.
U.S. international sales of broiler chickens, of which Georgia was the top exporter, plummeted in 2024 after the Chinese government placed state-by-state bans on imports toward the end of 2023.
A market that was worth $508 million for Georgia producers that year dropped to $175 million in 2024. While giving seven states a brief reprieve ahead of Xi Jinping’s 2023 summit with then-President Biden, China reinstated the ban on many of them as the avian influenza virus known as H5N1 resurged in the U.S., leaving Kentucky and Louisiana as the only major producing states with current access.
While trade has slowed, it hasn’t completely dried up. China still allows cooked chicken into the market, and some Georgia firms have pivoted in that direction, with exports of heat-treated products increasing to $90 million in 2024 from $27.6 million the prior year.
But the “real money” is in getting frozen cuts back into the market, says Greg Tyler, president of the Stone Mountain-based USA Poultry and Egg Export Council.
It’s not just about China’s retaliatory tariffs, which reached 125 percent as the countries escalated their trade war Friday. That move is just the icing on a cake of trade barriers that China has put in the way of U.S. products since August 2022, when Nancy Pelosi led a congressional delegation to Taiwan over objections from the mainland.
That year, U.S. poultry exports to China hit a record $1 billion, but they’ve faced a tougher environment since.
“Chicken has been used before as a pawn on this political chessboard, and we believe that this is all part of it,” Mr. Tyler told Global Atlanta.
Even more hurdles have been set up since the most recent skirmish in the trade war began this year, he added.
China has increased scrutiny and testing of American chicken coming into its ports, which often results in companies being “delisted” from the Chinese market over tests that U.S. producers say can be politically motivated.
This week, three U.S. companies including Coastal Processing LLC, based in Louisville, Ga., were delisted as China’s spat with the Trump administration heated up. American Proteins Inc., a Tyson subsidiary with a presence in Georgia, was among four sorghum and poultry companies banned after China’s General Administration on Customs said it found mold and salmonella, respectively, in recent shipments.
“Really, none of our traders and producers want to send any product to China right now, just because of the fear of findings and delistment, but also, who wants to pay a 100-plus percent duty?” Mr. Tyler said.
China has also been ignoring its obligations under the so-called “regionalization agreement” with the U.S. reached in 2020, Mr. Tyler added. That deal meant that instead of a blanket measure applying to all of the U.S, China would institute bird-flu bans on a state-by-state basis.
Ninety days after a state undergoes “virus elimination,” it sends proof to U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA then relays a “closeout report” to its counterpart in China, which under the agreement five business days to remove the U.S. state from the banned list. Yet no states have been removed since 2023, despite consistent requests from USDA, Mr. Tyler said.
Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama, all big poultry-producing states coming off of significant decontamination efforts, will be eligible to have their China market access restored in May.
“That will be in the next big test,” Mr. Tyler said.
But as the countries seem intent on playing chicken with tariffs, poultry could continue paying the price.
China’s market is hard to replace, especially given that it buys chicken feet, known as “paws” in the industry, for a massive premium over what producers can get selling them to pet-food plants.
“If we can get the tariff issues behind us and then the Chinese start backing off on the increased testing, you’re going to have more product flowing into the market, especially on the cooked side,” Mr. Tyler said. “The main thing we’ve got to bet back to is them abiding by their regionalization agreement. That’s where the real money is, when that product is able to go into the market.”
American chicken has been here before, as it was basically out of the Chinese market for five years after the 2014 discovery of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, in the West and Midwest.
That restriction was lifted in 2019, with the regionalization deal later reached in 2020 as the U.S. and China made progress on their so-called Phase One trade deal, after which U.S. exports hit their billion-dollar peak in 2022.
That pact came after President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on China during his first-term attempt to rectify the trade deficit with the country.
Later studies, however, concluded that China failed to meet its purchase targets of U.S. manufactured goods and agricultural products over the ensuing two years. The U.S. trade deficit with China stood at $295 billion in 2024.
Read more on this issue in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Trump plays chicken with China: What it means for Georgia’s poultry industry