U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. of Kansas led a bipartisan group of senators in penning a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) concerned with the recent and dramatic increase in used cooking oil imports from China.
Recent news coverage has suggested that large amounts of these imports could potentially be virgin vegetable oils fraudulently labeled as used cooking oil and sent here to exploit tax incentives and other renewable biofuels incentives, the senators said. This dramatic shift in imports is a contributing factor driving down prices for oilseeds in America’s heartland. Senator Marshall was joined by Senator Brown (D-OH), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) in sending the letter.
“Since 2020, in response to demand for renewable fuels, the U.S. has gone from importing less than 200 million pounds of UCO per year to importing over 3 billion pounds in 2023, with more than 50 percent of these imports coming from China,” the Senators stated in the letter. “As evidenced in recent news coverage, there is concern by some in the renewable fuels industry that large amounts of imported UCO may be a blend of UCO with virgin vegetable oils such as palm oil, which is directly linked to deforestation in Southeast Asia. This would constitute fraudulent value distortion of the commodity designed to take advantage of U.S. tax incentives in addition to Renewable Identification Number (RIN) fraud under the RFS. If true, this would have an especially punitive effect on U.S. agriculture, as imported UCO bears a lower carbon intensity score than domestically produced agricultural feedstocks, which incur punitive and unnecessary indirect land use change penalties in state and federal programs, as well as onerous verification and reporting requirements required of farmers to validate carbon-friendly practices.”
The Senators further said, “Given the fact that USDA and EPA have a role in developing renewable fuels policy, including through the agencies’ roles in helping the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department to create the guidance for tax credits for renewable fuels, you have a clear responsibility to advise the Administration on these matters and help maintain the integrity of the entire clean fuels programs by ensuring American tax dollars are not subsidizing the import of counterfeit feedstocks. USTR and CBP also have a clear role in policing imports to ensure that foreign entities are not mislabeling their products when bringing them into the country.”
