China Lists All Five Cheese Tariff Codes For US Imports While EU Cheese Pays Up To 11.7%

If this were my export plan, I would put the tariff headline aside for an hour. I would pull the share table first. One tells you the price, the other tells you the size of the job.

Every cheese code is on the list

On 27 September 2026 the White House published the working papers for a new US-China Board of Trade. With them came two lists of goods, one for each side, set up for lower duty. China's list carries all five cheese codes under heading 0406. That is fresh cheese and curd, grated and powdered cheese, and processed cheese. Blue cheese and the catch-all line for other cheese are there too. Butter, yogurt, whey and modified whey sit on the same list. No cheese type is left out.

What the Board can actually do

The framework is called 30-for-30. Each side has named roughly 30 billion dollars of goods for lower duty. The terms say the lists will be looked at once a year at most. Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer lead the US side. He Lifeng, a vice premier, leads the Chinese side. Nothing in the papers cuts a cheese duty yet. The lists name what the two sides are willing to talk about.

Why the US side wants this

US dairy pays dearly in China today. The US Dairy Export Council puts the duty on some US dairy lines as high as 45%. That is at least 25 points above the rate on the same goods from elsewhere. US dairy volume to China has fallen 43% since the first tariffs landed in July 2018. Sales there have run between 372.8 million dollars in 2019 and 802.8 million in 2022. Gregg Doud of the National Milk Producers Federation said the duties keep US dairy at a disadvantage. Competitors gain ground while that holds. Krysta Harden of the export council asked for the duties to go altogether.

The EU is moving the other way

China moved against EU cheese in the same window. Final anti-subsidy duty on EU dairy came in during February 2026. It runs for five years at rates up to 11.7%. The provisional rates had been far higher, up to 42.7%. Cheese and high-fat cream are both caught. Arla Foods, Lactalis International and about fifty other firms were given a lower rate. EU dairy sent 524,000 tonnes into China in the first eleven months of 2025, worth 1.05 billion pounds.

New Zealand holds the lane and pays nothing

Here is the number that frames the whole thing. New Zealand supplies 61% of the cheese tonnage China imports. The EU holds 17%, Australia 14% and the United States 5%. Those shares come from AHDB, averaged over 2023 to 2025. New Zealand dairy has entered China free of duty since January 2024, under the trade deal between the two countries. So the largest supplier already pays nothing, and no Board of Trade list changes that.

A share point is the unit that matters here, and it has to come off someone. US cheese exports hit 613,045 tonnes in 2025, up 20% on the year before. The trade has product to sell. Mexico took the most of it. China took little. Taking five more points of the Chinese market would be worth about a twelfth of what New Zealand ships there. That is a contract fight rather than a duty fight.

What this means for the market

The news is good for US sellers and poor for EU ones. Neither fact tells a board whether China is worth the money. Three things decide that. How many tonnes of each cheese type the country actually buys. Who supplies them today and on what terms. And what a buyer pays to switch. A duty cut changes the price of entry. It does not change the position of whoever is already there. The lists move once a year at most, so the slow part is the commercial part.

One tariff list rarely moves a trade lane on its own. What matters is whether the tonnage behind it is big enough to chase. The other half is who would have to give it up. Our Global Cheese Database 2026 is built on exactly that table. It gives production, imports, exports and consumption in tonnes for 39 cheese types. The count runs to 48 countries, with 2025 actuals and forecasts to 2030. The waitlist carries a free sample country chapter.