Sheep Meat Counter-Seasonality

Well, bloody Trump, he's going to get us one way or another. He's making farming, in fact, he's making business pretty tough in this country at the moment. You might remember. On Tuesday evening we were talking about beef and lamb New Zealand's mid-season update and a couple of the key risk factors were obviously the Middle East goes without saying and the US trade policy. Well, an investigation into New Zealand and Australian lamb exports to the US looks set to proceed as US President Donald Trump searches for replacements for his Liberation Day tariffs, the US International Trade Commission. can investigate whether surges in imports are causing serious injury to the US domestic market and industries. Now, the numbers are not insignificant here, Heather. The American sheep farmers are none too happy. While they're happy to take all the beef we can offer, they're not so happy about the sheep meat because imports increased 45% between 2020 and 2023. And in fact, Australia and New Zealand accounted for... 99% of imports over that time. Now the one meat industry source has said February's ruling against Trump's liberation day tariffs by the US Supreme Court mean that the administration, as I said, is looking for any means possible to get its tariff agenda back on track because New Zealand's sheep meat exports to the US currently facing 10%. That's down from the 15% before the ruling. It's not chicken feed what we're sending over there either. Meat, sheep meat exports value rose 10% to $685 million in the past year. So it's a sizable market for us. Beef and lamb New Zealand chair Kate Ackland is arguing that counter-seasonality, i.e. we provide lamb in their off-season production means it's not a direct threat to US producers, but I don't. But I don't think the American sheep farmers, Heather, are buying that for one moment.