China's corn and biofuel policies and agricultural trade: Projections from an international agricultural commodity market model

We calibrate the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development International Agricultural Commodity Market model using 2019/20 marketing year crop data and 2020 calendar year livestock and biofuel data to project China's agricultural imports under six plausible policy scenarios focusing on ethanol, corn, and pork from 2021 to 2030. Our baseline projection reflects China's current policy of relaxing the tariff rate quota (TRQ) for corn and imposing ethanol tariff without any ethanol/gasoline blend mandate. Baseline projections show China's ethanol imports grow from 100 million liters in 2020 to 1.21 billion liters in 2030; however, they also show that China's corn and pork imports remain at high levels and peak in the 2022/23 marketing year. Compared with the baseline, adopting the ethanol mandate increases China's corn and pork imports, and resuming the corn TRQ increases China's ethanol and pork imports. Both the ethanol mandate and corn import restrictions shift US and global exports from corn to ethanol and pork products. These projections can serve as benchmark estimates of China's imports of major agricultural commodities in the next decade. [EconLit citations: Q17, Q18, Q11].

Automated summary

We calibrated a model to project China's agricultural imports for the next decade, taking into account various policy scenarios. The projections indicate that China's ethanol imports will significantly increase, while corn and pork imports will remain high and peak in 2022/23. Implementing an ethanol mandate will further increase corn and pork imports, while resuming corn import restrictions will increase ethanol and pork imports. These projections serve as benchmark estimates for China's imports of major agricultural commodities.