Biden gives China ultimatum over pangolin trade
The US President said he would impose trade sanction unless China acts by the end of the year
President Joe Biden has stated that the United States will impose trade sanctions on China if it does not address its role in the illegal trade in pangolins, the world’s most heavily trafficked animals, by the end of the year.
Pangolins are endangered scaly mammals that live in Africa and Asia. They are widely poached for their flesh and scales, which are used in traditional medicines, particularly in China. Since January 2017, commercial international trade in pangolins has been banned under the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). But illicit trade continues.
According to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a nongovernmental organization, around 600,000 pangolins were illegally traded between 2016 and 2019. In 2019, authorities in Singapore seized 14 tons of pangolin scales in transit from Nigeria to Vietnam. Worth more than US$38 million, they came from an estimated 36,000 pangolins.
In August 2020, EIA and its partners at the Center for Biological Diversity and the Global Law Alliance for Animals and the Environment petitioned the US government to certify China under a law called the Pelly Amendment. This law authorizes the US President to restrict imports from any nation engaging in trade that undermines an international treaty for protecting endangered species.
More than three years later, on 8 September 2023, the US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced that she had issued a finding that Chinese nationals are “diminishing the effectiveness of CITES by engaging in trade or taking of pangolin species”.
This set a clock ticking for Joe Biden. Under the Pelly Amendment, he had 60 days to decide whether to embargo any product from China. The law requires the President to explain to Congress any failure to impose sanctions against a certified nation.
China responded swiftly. In a statement on 9 September, China’s main CITES-implementing agency — the National Forestry and Grassland Administration — said it “firmly opposed attempts to use the issue of pangolin protection to damage China’s reputation”.
The statement highlighted China’s “significant efforts and achievements in global pangolin protection” including ending commercial imports and exports of pangolins and their products, and acting against smuggling and illegal trading of pangolins.
But research published by EIA in October of this year showed that more than 50 products manufactured by Chinese companies contain pangolin derivatives and are easily available online.
James Toone, EIA’s Deputy Campaign Lead for pangolins told me that: “China’s quota system – whereby it grants private entities the use of pangolin scales for the manufacture of ‘licensed products’ – is in fact fraught with opacity and complexity.”
“It is almost certainly an open invitation to corruption,” says Toone. “EIA has called for all private stockpiles of pangolin scales to be destroyed.”
On 3 November, President Biden issued his legally-required message to the US Congress. Rather than sanction China, he set a deadline for action, acknowledging that China had made some progress and needed more time to take the “necessary steps to protect pangolin species from possible extinction”.
Biden said China needed to completely close its domestic market for pangolins and pangolin parts, transparently account for domestic stockpiles, and fully remove pangolins and pangolin parts from the national list of approved medicines.
He said: “If significant commitments by the People’s Republic of China to implement CITES-directed measures to protect pangolin species have not been made by December 31, 2023, I plan to direct certain prohibitions on the importation of, and impose trade measures on, certain products from the People’s Republic of China.”
Such products might include fish and wildlife products, as well as pharmaceuticals made by companies that manufacture products containing pangolin derivatives.
“We think the response by the President is quite strong, and we’re hopeful that the US is able to successfully negotiate meaningful change,” says Erica Lyman, Director of the Global Law Alliance for Animals and the Environment.
Sarah Uhlemann, International Program Director and Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, says: “We hope the White House will continue to assert strong pressure over the next two months.”
“The White House announcement suggested that the President is standing strong, demanding that China close its domestic market, account for stockpiles, and remove pangolins from its national list of traditional Chinese medicines,” she told me. “These actions would make a real difference for pangolin survival.”
Photo credit: Marcus Chua — Flickr / Creative Commons