Saying that this is “not a trade action but a health and safety action,” Dan Glickman, U.S. secretary of agriculture, Friday announced the imposition of emergency restrictions on imports from China to prevent the spread of the destructive Asian longhorn beetle, which has been dining on hundreds of trees on the city’s North Side.
“Our first priority is to protect this country, its people, its natural resources and its agriculture,” Glickman said at a morning news conference here.
The bug is thought to have arrived in the U.S. in wooden packing crates carrying goods from China. There is no known pesticide to treat infested trees, which will be killed.
Last year, China exported $62 billion worth of goods to the United States. Of that, 25 percent to 50 percent could be affected by the federal restrictions that prohibit the use of wooden packing materials unless they have been pretreated to kill beetles or beetle larvae that might be in the wood.
