The great butter mystery
Here in Japan it has been virtually impossible to buy butter at the supermarket for the past month or so. There is some sort of shortage and the newspaper blames increasing feed prices, China and substitution of milk for cheese production instead of butter. First of all, I don’t know why supermarkets don’t just put the price up instead of allowing stocks to sell out so fast. I guess consumers would complain about getting creamed (sorry) but I think they’d quickly realise that being able to buy butter at a higher price is better than not being able to buy butter at all.
Actually I’m a bit confused about how this situation has arisen, since the supposed causes sound like relatively long-term things, and it was perfectly easy to buy butter earlier this year. The newspaper says that milk producers have reduced production because milk consumption dropped suddenly, which left them with an excess supply. But if they could cut production so quickly, surely they can increase it just as quickly again too. Unfortunately not, says the newspaper, it will take up to two years to breed more cows to increase production.
Adding to my confusion, as far as I know, there is also no butter shortage in any other country. Now I know nothing about about Japan’s trade policy towards butter, but I’ve never seen imported butter on sale. So I wonder if protectionism is causing consumer suffering in this case while domestic dairy farmers are milking it (sorry, couldn’t resist).
6 Comments
And you made me hungry… you
The tariff rate of imported butter is 800-900% in Japan.
I believe this protectionism is for margarine producers, not for farmers.
CDO
CDO: I looked it up on the WTO website. It’s kind of complicated but it seems Japan’s tariff on butter is 29.8% plus about 1,000 yen per kg. Individual countries might have trade agreements that override this I guess. Anyway, it seems pretty high.
Aaron,
You are right, so am I. The actual tariff is 29.8% plus 1,159Yen per kilogram.
If the import price is 150Yen per kilogram, they would charge 1203Yen per kilogram for tax, which is 802%.
Perhaps Last Tango in Paris was on TV.
This protectionism Japan is practicing in certain food items has also previously made the people here suffer, last time I remember it was rice when the domestic harvest was poor…
I come from a country where there has always been more over production of butter than shortage of it - Finland. But, with this kind of tariffs Japanese cannot import butter from Finland, Denmark, Sweden nor any other large producer of dairy export products.
As Aaron mentioned, you cannot find imported butter in shops in Japan. My friends here in Nagano have European style restaurants. They would choose to buy European butter, which is tastier and more suitable for their food, but so far it has been impossible, and now they cannot even use the domestic one…
We all know how slow Japanese government is in making decisions, therefore this is not changing for long time, if ever…