Research on the Impact of Agricultural Environmental Barriers in Sino-US Trade Frictions on Chinese Agricultural Product Exports and Countermeasures

Abstract

Since 2018, three rounds of escalating Sino-US trade friction have positioned agriculture as a core battleground for US sanctions and China’s countermeasures. Beyond traditional tariffs, the US increasingly deploys Agricultural Environmental Barriers (AEBs)-anchored in the FSMA, FIFRA, ESA and state-level “zero-tolerance” pesticide residue regulations-to exclude Chinese agricultural exporters from its premium market by internalizing compliance costs. This paper adopts a “case-rule-industry” three-tiered analytical framework, drawing on 2018-2023 WTO/TBT-SPS notifications, US FDA/EPA enforcement records, China’s MOFCOM trade remedy databases and enterprise interviews, to systematically analyze the evolution, enforcement characteristics and industrial impacts of AEBs amid trade friction and propose a “rule embedding-supply chain restructuring-multilateral discourse power” counterstrategy. Key findings indicate AEBs have evolved from single “product standards” to comprehensive “full-chain standards,” with enforcement featuring “multi-legal application per case,” “inter-state coordination” and “extraterritorial traceability”; Chinese exports of garlic, broccoli, tilapia, shrimp, apples and citrus to the US face targeted constraints, driving relevant enterprises’ average compliance costs up by 18-32% and raising SME exit rates; existing Chinese countermeasures suffer from delayed rule tracking, fragmented evidence chains and disjointed multilateral advocacy. Accordingly, this work advances targeted countermeasures: a regulatory-level early warning mechanism integrating a “US-EU-Japan Regulatory Disparities Database + Compliance Cost Calculator,” an industrial-level shared service platform combining Provincial Export Demonstration Zones, leading enterprises and third-party compliance centers, and a multilateral “North-South pesticide residue disparity” discourse alliance via RCEP, WTO SPS Committee and COP side events to promote “common but differentiated” agricultural environmental standards. This research provides micro-case references and institutional support for China’s subsequent Sino-US trade negotiations and engagement in international agricultural environmental governance.