From: Gene McAloon 

On Fri, 07 May 2004 20:07:43 +1200, dmhills{at}attglobal.net (Don Hills) wrote:

>In article ,
>Gary Wiltshire  wrote:
>>
>>I've yet to talk to anyone who likes it once they've tried it.  Blecchh.
>>I'm with Gene on this one.
>
>Different tastes. "We" don't like "your" bland,
soapy beers or "your" thin,
>bitter coffee either. "You" don't like Vegemite. No-one has
come up with a
>good answer to my question, though - why is there a tariff on NZ beef?

Because NZ has tariffs on beef imports from the US. At that, you don't even
export as much beef to the US as present trade agreements allow.

What your beef exporters are demanding is that they have unrestricted
access to the US market while maintaining restrictions on beef imports.
They argue that is
the way it should be because you are a small, struggling country, blah,
blah, blah. You have the same problem with Australia as you do with the US
and for the
same reasons.

All that is readily understandable. You are a small country and if you
granted unrestricted access to US or Australian beef, your own beef growers
would be put
out of business.  Yet, like other small countries, you have the gall to
demand unrestricted access to other nation's larger markets.

There has been some talk of a free trade agreement with the US, which the
Bush dummies are pushing, but wisely your government resists that because
of pressure
from you own manufacturing and farm sectors.

Aside from all of that, my contention is that you don't export even the
amount of beef to the US that you could because there is such a small
market for it and
that market is small because your grass fed beef is, quite simply, inferior
to US grain fed beef, grossly inferior. No American steak lover would be
caught dead eating NZ beef. Despite what Bill Lucy has to say, most of the
importer grass fed beef is used in ground meat products. That is not to say
that all ground meat here is imported grain fed beef, in McDonald
hamburgers or anything else. The US beef industry won't allow that much
importation of beef of any kind.

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