Brazil’s government expressed concern over China’s renewal of US beef import licences, warning the move could reshape competition in the country’s largest meat export market.
A senior Brazilian government official told the South China Morning Post that the renewal brought “anxiety” to the sector and could affect domestic cattle prices. China is Brazil’s largest beef market, and the quota system already reduces the country’s competitiveness, the official said.
The comments came after Bloomberg News reported on Thursday that China had renewed import licences for hundreds of US beef plants during US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing for talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Licences are valid for five years and had been allowed to lapse last year amid the escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing.
The renewal is a reversal from months of frozen trade. Shipments of US beef and related products to China fell about 67 per cent between 2024 and 2025, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Because of this, the US had not used a large share of its quota allocation.
China announced in December that beef imports above a fixed country-by-country ceiling in 2026 would face a 55 per cent tariff, up from the standard 12 per cent rate.
The measure applies to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and the United States. Beijing justified it as a step to protect domestic producers, who have faced oversupply and weaker consumption tied to the economic slowdown, and the quota system is expected to stay in place through 2027 and 2028.
Brazil’s allocation was set at about 1.106 million tonnes, and shipments above that threshold are considered commercially unviable by the industry. The Brazilian official said it was “still early” to assess the impact of the Xi-Trump summit but added that Brasilia intended to discuss the issue with Beijing.
The Chinese embassy in Brasilia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The South American country shipped a record 119,630 tonnes of beef to China in January alone, and more than 40 per cent of the annual ceiling was consumed in the first quarter, according to Roberto Perosa, president of the Brazilian Association of Meat Exporting Industries.
As a result, Brazilian beef exporters are now on track to exhaust their quota this month, and Beijing rejected a request to redistribute unused portions of other countries’ quotas among suppliers that had already exceeded their own limits.
The reactivation of US licences could allow American suppliers to fill part of that unused space. The US had not consumed a large portion of its Chinese allocation during the trade war, and the restored access opens the way for American beef to capture a larger share of the world’s largest import market.
“They may have thought the impact would be smaller because we export many other commodities there, like soy,” Perosa said in April.
“But it hits our sector very hard because China was the destination for 46 per cent of our beef exports last year.”
Brazil exported a record 233,950 tonnes of fresh beef in March as companies rushed to ship before the quota closed. The benchmark price for finished cattle reached 365 reais (US$71.57) per arroba, a gain of 12.5 per cent over 12 months, according to the Centre for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics at the University of Sao Paulo.
Alternatives for Brazilian exporters remain limited. South Korea has scheduled inspections of Brazilian plants only for June, and routing shipments through Vietnam or Hong Kong is not considered viable by the industry. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
