A tariff war between the EU and the US is threatening to buckle one of Greece’s most buoyant export sectors, which survived a decade of economic crises, but possibly not US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration’s decision to impose an additional 25 percent tariff on a range of EU products in retaliation for EU aircraft subsidies, hits products from Scotch to Italian cheeses and French wines.
In Greece, its prized canned peach.
Photo: Reuters
Greece is the world’s biggest exporter of tinned peaches with about one-fifth of its 250,000 tonnes annual production absorbed by the US market.
Formerly subject to an import levy of 18 percent, the new tariffs — part of WTO-authorized countermeasures to Airbus subsidies — would increase the total import duty to the US to 43 percent.
The people of northern Greece are not impressed.
“Trump would do well to behave himself and let us get to work so we can have a livelihood,” peach farmer Tasos Halkidis said. “We don’t want this tariff business.”
The fertile plain straddling the regions of Imathia and Pella in central Macedonia is one massive peach orchard. A sea of pink greets visitors in the spring, when the peaches are in bloom.
Standing in a huge warehouse piled high with millions of aluminum cans, 63-year-old Kostas Apostolou, head of the Greek Canners Association, said the dispute is threatening their livelihood and would potentially shut them out of their biggest market.
“Why are they punishing us?” Apostolou said.
The increase in tariffs came into effect on Oct. 18, just as Greeks readied to ship 50 million tins to US markets.
Many customers there — mainly catering companies that supply hospitals, schools and the military — have either canceled orders or have said they would not be prepared to pay for any tariff increase, producers said.
“Suddenly there was this [trade] war... We could never imagine that this could affect our jobs here in this small area,” Apostolou said.
Stuck with excess supply, producers are also uncomfortably aware how their production lines are tailored to the US market. The sector is saddled with 3kg tins aimed at the US, which cannot be sold in Europe, Asia or Latin America where 1kg tins are dispatched.
The Canners Association and other industry experts estimated the loss of income from the US market at about US$50 million — a small amount in terms of international trade, but vital for one of the poorer regions in Greece, with unemployment at 20 percent.
They are worried that resulting excess product would lead to a collapse in prices and unemployment would jump.
The heart of Greek peach country is planted with millions of trees in an area of more than 20,000 hectares.
About 10,000 small farms and 10,000 employees work for 17 can factories in the area, with the peach crop giving life to the wider Imathia and Pella regions.
“It’s a shock,” said Eleftherios Saitis, who built one of the first can factories in the early 1970s.
The sector is already reeling from the impact of a Russian embargo on the EU fruit and vegetable sector imposed in 2014. Farmers worry this might be the final blow.
“Now with the tariffs from the United States, it will be a very big hit, it will be a catastrophe,” Halkidis said.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS