Asian Beetle Chews Holes in Trade Deals

A parks employee from nearby Skokie, Barry Albach knew just enough about beetles to realize he hadn’t seen this one before: a coal-black bug with white polka dots and 2-inch white-ringed antennae. He looked up the beetle on the Internet. Then he called the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Within weeks of his call in July, the first quarantine was imposed as officials scrambled frantically to check the spread of the Asian long-horned beetle and to find out how it got into Albach’s buddy’s tree in the Chicago neighborhood of Ravenswood. Over the next month, two more infestations were found nearby, and the quarantines--which outlaw the removal of even a half-inch tree branch--grew to 14 square miles.

Now, the beetle--which will gut nearly any deciduous tree, can’t be controlled with pesticides and faces no natural predators in the United States--is threatening to start a trade war with China.

After federal officials determined the beetle had made its way from China to a small Ravenswood manufacturing plant by stowing away in untreated wood crates, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman made a remarkable announcement: China was given 90 days, until Dec. 17, to begin fumigating, kiln-drying or otherwise treating all wood shipping materials exported to this country.

U.S. officials say the rule will affect $20 billion to $30 billion worth of imports from China. Chinese officials place that figure at $30 billion to $40 billion, or roughly half of all the goods it ships to the United States, which is by far China’s largest export market.

Experts say whatever the figure, implementing the mandate will be difficult and costly, and it comes as China’s booming export economy has begun to slow, held down by the financial tumult in Asia.

China Hints at Retaliatory Measures

Calling the rule “irrational” and a protectionist policy, China has begun hinting at retaliatory measures--including halting imports of American wheat and soybeans and reserving “the right to further reactions,” according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

“If this ruling takes effect and there’s an interruption in their trade, that’s going to cause some serious problems,” said Wayne Morrison, a specialist on U.S.-China trade with the Congressional Research Service. “They’re worried about the potential effect on their own economy. They also think they ought to be getting a pat on the back for keeping their promise not to devalue the yuan, and [for] being a force for stability during this Asian financial crisis.”

Although the United States certainly has an interest in supporting China’s economy, U.S. officials insist the regulation has but one purpose: preventing an infestation that could wipe out entire forests--at a long-term cost to the American economy of $138 billion, according to an Agriculture Department estimate, as everything from tourism to the maple syrup industry could be threatened.

“This would make Dutch elm disease look like small potatoes,” said David Aaron, U.S. undersecretary of Commerce for international trade, earlier this month in Beijing, referring to a disease that nearly wiped out elms in the Western Hemisphere two decades ago. “We have already done something which we don’t normally do, that is to give 90 days’ notice.”

Chinese officials, meanwhile, contend the regulation is less about beetles and more about America’s trade deficit with China, which has reached $1 billion a week.

“The underestimation by the United States of the potential loss to China’s exports also betrays its true intention to narrow its trade deficit with China,” said Zhou Shijian, of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters, in Business Weekly recently.

Although the beetle is endemic in Japan and Korea, the regulation applies only to China. The costs of treating the packing materials would be passed onto customers in the U.S., Zhou cautioned.

The costs of the beetle itself are already being felt.

In Chicago--a city that prides itself on its greenery and a mayor, Richard M. Daley, who calls himself a “tree hugger”--half a dozen inspectors hit the streets each day with a solid knowledge of the beetle’s behavior and a can of fluorescent green spray paint.

So far, more than 210 trees have been marked for death, which would have come anyway. By November, when the beetles stop flying and the larvae are deep in the wood, officials expect about 400 trees will be cut down, chopped up and burned. The search-and-destroy operation will begin again in spring.

Other Regions Show Signs of Infestation

And Chicago’s isn’t the only infestation in the United States. In Brooklyn and nearby Amityville, N.Y., 2,000 trees have been lost since the beetle was discovered there in 1996. So far, the two relatively small infestations have cost an estimated $10 million.

“There are probably other cities that are infested and simply don’t know it,” said Patrick Hogan of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, which has hosted worried agriculture officials from 30 states as they have flocked to Chicago to study a pest that so far has received relatively little publicity.

Indeed, inspectors have made 22 “interceptions” of the beetle at warehouses or shipyards in 14 states in recent years, from Bellingham, Wash., to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Two have been in the Los Angeles Basin: one in Hawthorne, the other in South Gate.

If 22 cases doesn’t sound so bad considering the number of Chinese imports to the U.S.--fully half of which come ashore at the Port of Long Beach--entomologists say the Anoplophora glabripennis is not to be trifled with in any number.

Unlike many beetles, Asian long-horneds are not particular about their hosts. Maples, elms, poplars, willows, box elders, mulberries--just about anything will do. And the beetles destroy the tree from the outside and the inside, doing damage during every stage of the pest’s development.

In the summer and fall, adult females gnaw holes into the bark of the tree and deposit their eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae bore into the heart of the tree, feeding on the wood throughout the winter, and in some cases for up to three years.

When they have matured, the beetles then bore their way back out of the tree, leaving finger-sized exit holes. They then feed on the bark and leaves.

The mature beetles are not easily controlled because, although they are heavy-bodied, they can fly short distances. The larvae, meanwhile, burrow deep enough into the tree as to make pesticides ineffective.

In China, despite the fact that the beetle is preyed on by an Asian wasp, they have become a serious forestry problem in recent years. Chinese entomologists have taken to planting “trap trees,” usually box elders or sugar maples, to attract the beetles, then cutting down and burning the traps.

Better than nothing, the trap trees are nonetheless a “primitive control method,” said Al Newton, associate curator of insects at Chicago’s Field Museum.

Researchers in the United States and China are seeking more effective ways of controlling the beetle, experimenting with a female pheromone that would lure males to a trap, seeking another beetle that might travel the same tunnels and feed on the pests or a chemical that would repel the beetles. So far, however, none of the methods has shown much promise.

At the same time, the U.S. has sent agriculture and trade representatives to help China implement the new regulation, including a Beijing-based beetle task force. The job of U.S. diplomats, meanwhile, is to convince the Chinese government that the regulation is about safeguarding the environment and nothing more.

“Our objective is to help them to ease into the regulations,” said USDA Deputy Assistant Secretary Isi A. Siddiqui, and to “convince them that we have no desire to use this infestation” to narrow the trade deficit.

But, Siddiqui said, “there has been a whole spectrum of reaction” from China. “It’s very hard to predict what they will do.”