China to stop investigation into U.S. sorghum imports

China has decided to stop the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into imports of sorghum from the United States, the Ministry of Commerce said on Friday in a statement.

According to the statement, the investigation authorities found that the price of domestic pork has been falling recently, and many pig farmers are facing difficulties. Under these circumstances, anti-dumping and countervailing measures against imported sorghum originating in the United States are not in the public interest.

The investigation was launched on Feb. 4.

On April 17, MOFCOM handed out a preliminary ruling, which stated that the dumping of American grain sorghum on the Chinese market has dragged down the price of the product in the country and caused material injury to domestic industries.

Therefore, China started to impose anti-dumping measures by substantially raising the import deposit starting from April 18. Any enterprise which imports sorghum from the US is subject to a deposit rate of 178.6 percent.

In the latest statement on Friday, MOFCOM said the deposit collected will be returned in full.

China is the top buyer of U.S. sorghum as well as soybeans, the U.S.’ most valuable export to the world’s second largest economy.

The United States shipped 4.76 million tonnes of sorghum to China in 2017, worth around 1.1 billion U.S. dollars and making up the bulk of China’s roughly 5 million tonnes of imports of the grain last year, according to Chinese customs data.