The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has revealed that US beef imports from Ireland halved in 2022 to just 3,805t at the end of week 52 compared with 7,820t in 2021.

Ireland has a miniscule share of the 1.145m tonnes US beef import market, half of which is supplied by Canada and Mexico on a tariff-free basis.

One of the problems Irish beef exporters to the US faced in 2022 was the surge in Brazilian beef exports filling the 65,000t all-countries tariff-free quota that Ireland also uses.

Once the quota is filled, any additional imports are subject to a 26.4% import tariff, which makes the market less attractive to suppliers.

However, it didn’t impact on Brazilian supplies to the US in 2022, as they jumped from 46,076t in 2021 to 109,309t in 2022.

Argentina, which has its own 20,000t tariff-free quota, increased supplies from 18,775t in 2021 to 23,557t last year.

The biggest drop in supplies were from New Zealand, down to 124,690t compared with 161,687t in 2021, and Australian supplies also fell by 6% to 138,074t.

Both countries increased their exports of beef to China in 2022.