BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s foreign ministry on Friday urged U.S. politicians to exercise more “common sense” after a U.S. senator called for a probe into imports of Chinese garlic, citing concerns about food safety and labour practices in the country.
Republican Senator Rick Scott wrote to several U.S. government departments this week, describing in one letter Chinese garlic as “sewage garlic” and saying the use of human excrement as fertilizer in China was a serious concern.
In other letters, he said garlic production in China may involve exploitative labour practices and that low Chinese prices undercut domestic growers, threatening U.S. economic security.
The U.S. counts China as its biggest foreign supplier of fresh and chilled garlic, with millions of dollars worth shipped across the Pacific annually.
“The garlic would never have dreamed that it would pose a threat to the United States,” said Mao Ning, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, when asked at a regular news conference about Scott’s letters.
“What I want to emphasise is that generalising the concept of national security and politicising and weaponising economic, trade and technological issues will only increase security risks to the global supply chain and ultimately hurt others and ourselves,” she said.
“I also want to advise some American politicians to exercise more common sense and rationality to avoid ridicule.”
Trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies are set to heat up when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, having threatened tariffs in excess of 60% on U.S. imports of Chinese goods.
During Trump’s first term, Chinese garlic was hit with a U.S. tariff hike to 10% in 2018 and then to 25% in 2019. It was among thousands of Chinese goods slapped with higher tariffs during the U.S.-Sino trade war that was a hallmark of his presidency.
Any punitive action on Chinese garlic alone is unlikely to rock overall bilateral trade, with shipments of the bulbs representing just a fraction of China’s $500 billion exports to the United States last year.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Joe Cash; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
