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The US has demanded that the EU delay a ban on cocoa, timber and sanitary products potentially linked to deforestation, arguing it would hurt US producers.
The request, made in a letter to the European Commission seen by the Financial Times and dated May 30, comes seven months before the bloc’s planned implementation of the ban.
The law would require traders to provide documentation proving that imports, ranging from chocolate to furniture and livestock products, were made without destroying any forest.
In the letter, Gina Raimondo and Thomas Vilsack, the U.S. secretaries of Commerce and Agriculture respectively, and Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the deforestation law posed “critical challenges” for U.S. producers.
“We therefore urge the European Commission to delay the implementation of this regulation and subsequent enforcement of the penalties until these substantial challenges have been addressed,” they said.
US timber traders have said they are considering cutting EU export contracts because they cannot prove their paper does not come from deforested land.
Other trading partners, notably major palm oil producing countries Indonesia and Malaysia, have also urged Brussels to delay the application of the law.
The sectors most affected by the regulations in the US, the EU’s second largest import partner, are the wood, paper and pulp industries. According to figures from the US International Trade Commission, the EU imported approximately $3.5 billion worth of US forest products in 2022.
The law requires proof that products come from deforestation-free land after 2020, including a statement with geolocation data. But the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) said it was “impossible” to comply because paper and pulp are made from leftover sawmill and forest residues mixed from different sources.
“This makes it effectively impossible to trace each individual wood chip back to the original forest plot. Additionally, the technology necessary to track our fiber flow to meet this requirement does not currently exist,” AF&PA said.
There could be an impact on certain products such as tissues and menstrual products, as the US supplies 85 percent of the pulp used in these products globally, the report said.
In October, 66 members of Congress wrote to Tai asking him to raise in Brussels the challenges facing US paper and pulp producers as a result of the EU’s deforestation law.
“The EU regulations impose impractical requirements that would unnecessarily restrict trade for products from low-risk countries that responsibly manage their supply chains, such as the United States,” the congressional letter said.
There is also internal opposition within the EU. The bloc’s development commissioner Jutta Urpilainen and agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski have called for a delay, as have a majority of EU agriculture ministers led by Austria, who also wanted to exempt small farmers from the rules.
The International Trade Center, a U.N.-backed body, said the law could lock out small producers from developing countries, who do not have the technology to verify that their goods were not grown on deforested land, from the supply chain.
EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius has defended the law and traveled to Latin America and African countries earlier this year to “allay fears about the possible consequences,” he said in March.
The regulation requires customs authorities to check 9 percent of products coming from countries with a “high risk” of deforestation and 3 percent from countries with a “standard risk.” Under pressure from the producing countries, the committee has agreed that all countries will initially be classified as ‘standard risk’.
The committee confirmed it had received the letter from the US government and said it would respond in due course.