Dreyfus CEO confident Argentina will win ‘unjust’ biodiesel dumping case

In an interview with Reuters, the CEO of commodity trader Louis Dreyfus has said he is “confident” Argentina would prevail in fighting what he labelled an “unjust” biodiesel dumping case in the US.

Speaking at the Financial Times Commodities Americas Summit, Dreyfus’ Gonzalo Ramirez Martiarena told Reuters that Argentina does not sell the biofuel below cost.

In June, the US International Trade Commission voted to continue a US Commerce Department investigation into alleged dumping and unfair subsidies of biodiesel fuels from Argentina. Argentina’s government denies accusations of flooding the US market with biodiesel.

“Argentina does not sell biodiesel below cost. There is no dumping.” Ramirez Martiarena told Reuters.

Dreyfus sells Argentine biodiesel. The trader is part of the so-called ABCD quartet of global agricultural traders alongside Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill.

Martiarena said he was confident the case against the US would be “won”. In September 2016, the country successfully defended itself against dumping allegations in Europe, with an EU court annulling anti-dumping tariffs that had been applied to Argentine biodiesel imports.

Argentina is the world’s third biggest exporter of soybeans. In 2015, the country’s president, Mauricio Macri, cut 5 percentage points off the export tax on soybeans, as well as making cuts to corn and wheat export taxes. Martiarena argued that Argentina needed to further cut export taxes to avoid losing market share to Brazil.

In March 2017, the US National Biodiesel Board, the trade association representing the biodiesel and renewable fuel industries, submitted an anti-dumping and countervailing duty petition with the US government to investigate imports from Argentina and Indonesia, saying the countries were violating trade laws.

In late June, NBB reported that imports from Argentina had increased despite the petition being submitted and the investigation initiated. At the time, Anne Steckel, vice president of federal affairs at NBB, speaking on behalf of the NBB Fair Trade Commission, said: “We’ve received information of potentially 75 million gallons of biodiesel flooding our ports soon—a significant increase from the import levels we saw in January, February and March. We filed the petition to level the playing field for US producers, and the NBB Fair Trade Coalition will use every legal tool available to address these unfairly traded imports.”