Yantai Shuangta Food Co., Ltd. is, on the complainant’s account in the European Commission’s own file, responsible for around 20% of worldwide pea protein capacity. Three regulators have now examined whether it sells into their markets at unfair prices. They reached three different answers.
In the United States, pea protein produced by Yantai Shuangta carries a 122.19% weighted-average dumping margin, collected as a 111.65% cash deposit after a subsidy offset. In the European Union, since 29 April 2026, it carries a 67.4% provisional anti-dumping duty — the highest company-specific rate in the regulation, identical to the residual rate for uncooperative exporters. In Canada, it carries no anti-dumping duty whatsoever, because the Canada Border Services Agency terminated the dumping investigation against it under paragraph 41(1)(a) of the Special Import Measures Act, having found the goods were not dumped.
Same company. Same product. Same country of origin. Roughly the same period. Three regulators, three answers.
This is not a story about one regulator getting it wrong. It is a story about what a procurement lead actually has to manage: an ingredient where duty exposure, product scope and even the unit the duty is expressed in change at every border, and where the divergence is deliberate and documented rather than accidental.
Methodology and what these numbers are not
Three primary instruments are compared here: the US antidumping and countervailing duty orders published at 89 FR 68390 on 26 August 2024 (cases A-570-154 and C-570-155); Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/916 of 27 April 2026, in force the day after its publication in the Official Journal on 28 April; and the CBSA’s Measures in Force record for MIF code HPC, following its final determination of 21 October 2024 and the Canadian International Trade Tribunal’s finding of 19 November 2024.
These duty rates are not measurements of the same thing and should not be read as a league table of how much dumping occurred. Each authority constructs normal value differently. The EU applied Article 2(6a) of Regulation (EU) 2016/1036, treating Chinese prices as distorted and selecting Brazil as the representative country from which to source undistorted benchmarks. The US ran its own non-market-economy methodology over a different investigation period. Canada assessed exporter-specific normal values under SIMA. The investigation periods differ, the domestic industries alleging injury differ, and the exporters that chose to cooperate differ in each case.
The EU rate is also constrained by the lesser duty rule. The regulation records dumping margins of 40.5% and 67.4% against injury margins of 81.9% and 130.8%; the duty was set at the lower figure in each case. Had the EU applied injury margins, its headline rates would have been roughly double.
Practical consequence: do not benchmark your landed cost in one market off a duty rate published in another. The rates are outputs of three different statutory methods, not three estimates of a single underlying quantity.
The three regimes side by side
| United States | Canada | European Union | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instrument | AD order A-570-154; CVD order C-570-155 | SIMA finding, MIF code HPC | Reg (EU) 2026/916 (provisional) |
| In force from | 26 August 2024 | 19 November 2024 (CITT finding) | 29 April 2026 |
| Measures | Anti-dumping and countervailing | Anti-dumping and countervailing | Anti-dumping only |
| Protein threshold | At least 65% on a dry weight basis | Minimum 65% dry weight, Jones factor 6.25 | More than 65% on a dry weight basis |
| Texturized pea protein | Excluded | Excluded | Included |
| Pea protein crisps | Excluded | Not named as a separate exclusion | Not excluded |
| Chickpea protein | Excluded | Not named | Not within the pea definition |
| Residual AD rate | 280.31% (China-wide entity) | 24.9% of export price | 67.4% |
| Residual subsidy rate | 15.84% ad valorem (All Others) | CNY 5.84 per kilogram | No countervailing case |
Three differences in that table matter more than the headline percentages.
First, the EU has no countervailing case. Regulation 2026/916 is an anti-dumping instrument alone. The US and Canada each ran parallel subsidy investigations; the EU did not. An exporter’s total duty exposure in the US is therefore the sum of two instruments, in Canada the sum of two instruments expressed in two different units, and in the EU a single ad valorem figure.
Second, Canada expresses its subsidy amounts as an absolute sum per kilogram in Chinese yuan, not as a percentage of value. The residual is CNY 5.84 per kilogram. Because it is fixed per unit rather than proportional to price, its effective ad valorem burden rises as the product’s price falls — the opposite of how the US and EU instruments behave.
Third, the protein thresholds are not identical. The US covers pea protein containing at least 65% protein; the EU covers pea protein containing more than 65%. A product assaying at exactly 65.0% is in scope in the United States and outside it in the European Union. Canada additionally fixes the calculation method — a Jones factor of 6.25 — which neither of the other two specifies on the face of the instrument.
Practical consequence: a single certificate of analysis will not answer the subjectivity question in all three markets. The threshold, the calculation basis and the treatment of the same physical form differ, so scope has to be assessed per destination.
The texturized split, and the EU’s reasoning
The clearest divergence is texturized pea protein.
The US order excludes it explicitly: HPC pea protein “that has gone through an extrusion process to alter the HPC pea protein at the structural and functional level, resulting in a product with a fibrous structure which resembles muscle meat upon hydration”. Canada’s product definition excludes “texturized pea protein” outright.
The EU includes it. The product under investigation is defined as high protein content pea protein above 65% on a dry weight basis, in all physical forms, “whether textured or not”.
This was contested, and the contest is on the record. Yantai Oriental Protein Tech Co., Ltd. and Jiujiang Tiantai Food Co., Ltd — the two companies that make up the Sanjia Group — requested that texturized pea protein be excluded from the EU scope. One of their three arguments was precisely that texturized material “were not part of the product scope in the Canadian and United States trade defence investigations against the PRC”.
The Commission rejected the request. Texturized and non-texturized pea protein are “manufactured with the same raw materials and using the same production process up to the obtention of pea protein”, it found, and share the same basic physical, technical and chemical characteristics; differences in cost and price “cannot per se justify a product exclusion”. On the comparison with the other two jurisdictions it was blunter still: that fact “is irrelevant for the purpose of determining the product scope in the current investigation”.
The same reasoning appears earlier in the regulation, answering a separate procedural complaint: “The fact that the scope was different to that of the US and Canada investigations is irrelevant in this regard, as this complaint’s scope was based on products that cause injury to the Union industry, not to the US or Canadian producers.”
That is the key sentence for anyone modelling exposure. The divergence is not drift. It is a reasoned position that scope follows the injury alleged in each jurisdiction, and therefore that alignment across jurisdictions is not an objective.
The same companies also asked the EU to exclude pea protein below 80% protein content, arguing it goes mainly into aquaculture feed and pet food rather than human nutrition. The Commission rejected that too, noting among other things that the argument about particle size was “technically wrong because the particle size of pea protein, whether a fine powder or granules, is not linked to the protein content”.
Practical consequence: if you texturize Chinese pea protein, or buy it already texturized, your US and Canadian exposure and your EU exposure diverge at that processing step. A supply chain built on the US exclusion does not transfer to Europe.
The same exporters, three verdicts
Because the US and EU instruments name companies, and Canada publishes its exporter list, the divergence can be read at company level.
| Exporter / producer | US | Canada | EU |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yantai Shuangta Food Co., Ltd. | AD 122.19% (111.65% cash deposit); cross-owned Zhaoyuan Junbang CVD 15.15% | Dumping case terminated; subsidy CNY 0.27/kg | 67.4% |
| Yantai Oriental Protein Tech Co., Ltd. | CVD 16.52% | Dumping case terminated; subsidy CNY 0.28/kg | 40.5% (Sanjia Group) |
| Jiujiang Tiantai Food Co., Ltd. | AD 122.19% via KTL Pharmaceutical; cross-owned with Yantai Oriental for CVD | Not separately listed | 40.5% (Sanjia Group) |
| Shandong Jianyuan Bioengineering Co., Ltd. | AD 122.19% via Jianyuan International; CVD 355.89% as a non-responsive company | Dumping case terminated; subsidy CNY 0.36/kg | Not individually named |
| Yantai T.Full Biotech Co., Ltd. | AD 122.19% | Only exporter issued normal values; subsidy case terminated as insignificant | Not individually named |
| Yantai Yiyuan Biological Engineering Co., Ltd. | Cross-owned with Yantai Oriental Protein Tech | Dumping case terminated; subsidy CNY 1.00/kg | Not individually named |
Two rows deserve attention.
Shandong Jianyuan carries a 355.89% US countervailing rate — the rate Commerce assigned to the four companies its order lists as non-responsive — while Canada found it was not dumping and set its subsidy amount at CNY 0.36 per kilogram. The gap between those two outcomes is mostly a gap in procedural participation, not in commercial conduct. A rate driven by non-cooperation is not evidence about the product.
Yantai T.Full is the mirror image. It is the only exporter Canada has issued normal values to — that is, the only one Canada treats as dumping — and simultaneously the one whose Canadian subsidy investigation was terminated for an insignificant amount. In the US it sits with everyone else at 122.19%.
Practical consequence: exporter-level rates are as much a record of who filed questionnaires as of who priced aggressively. When qualifying a supplier, ask which investigations it participated in, not only what rate it ended up with.
Why the EU acted when it did
The EU case is the newest and the least settled. The Commission initiated on 29 August 2025, following a complaint lodged on 15 July 2025 by the Ad Hoc Coalition of Union Pea Protein Producers, whose members were granted anonymity on the grounds of retaliation risk given their business links with China. Imports were made subject to registration by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2144 of 21 October 2025 — the step that preserves the option of collecting duties retroactively on registered entries.
The Government of China filed no questionnaire reply, so the Commission used facts available under Article 18 in assessing distortion. The complainant’s submissions, reproduced in the regulation, put China at around 60% of global pea protein production with roughly 80% of Chinese output concentrated in Zhaoyuan, Shandong, and describe a 70% VAT refund available to producers of plant protein derived from starch.
Those figures are the complainant’s, recorded in the Commission’s file rather than independently established by it, and should be read as such.
Practical consequence: because imports have been registered since October 2025, entries made before the provisional duty took effect are not necessarily beyond reach. Anyone who imported Chinese pea protein into the EU between registration and 29 April 2026 should confirm their position rather than assume those entries are closed.
The counter-argument
The obvious objection to this piece is that there is nothing to explain. Trade remedy law is national by design. Each authority answers a question posed by its own domestic industry, over its own period, under its own statute, using its own methodology. Divergent outcomes are the system working, not failing. The Commission said as much in terms.
That objection is correct as law, and the article should not be read as alleging error by anyone. Canada’s termination of the dumping case against four exporters and the US finding of a 122.19% margin against overlapping companies can both be sound: different periods, different comparison methods, different levels of cooperation.
But correctness as law and usability as commercial information are different tests. A formulator does not buy from a jurisdiction; they buy from a supplier and ship to several markets. For that buyer, the fact that three sound processes produce three incompatible answers on the same supplier is the operative reality regardless of how defensible each process is in isolation. The divergence is a real cost, borne by importers, even though nobody made a mistake.
What we could not establish
- The end date of the EU provisional measure. Regulation 2026/916 does not state a duration on its face in the text we retrieved, and we did not verify the applicable period against Article 7 of the basic Regulation. We have therefore not published an expiry date or a date for the definitive determination. Both should be treated as unknown here.
- Whether the EU will open a parallel countervailing case. We found no anti-subsidy proceeding on pea protein from China and have not asserted that one is planned or ruled out.
- The Canadian complainants. Secondary reporting names them, but we did not fetch the CBSA initiation notice, so we have not stated them.
- Current US administrative review status. The order’s anniversary month is August, which is when Commerce publishes its annual opportunity-to-request notice. We could not retrieve a 2026 review notice or any revised rates, so all US figures here are the original order rates from 89 FR 68390 and may have been superseded.
- Whether the four Canadian terminations still stand. The CBSA page we relied on was last modified 24 February 2025. Re-investigations can change exporter status.
- Import volume effects. We found no reliable series showing how Chinese pea protein volumes into each market moved after each measure, and have not estimated it.
Several widely circulated secondary summaries of the EU measure were reviewed and discarded. Two of the most prominent are explicitly AI-generated, and both state an entry-into-force date of 27 April 2026 — the date the regulation was signed. EUR-Lex records publication on 28 April and entry into force on 29 April, the day after publication, which is what the regulation itself provides. One of those pages also asserts a single CN code that the regulation contradicts: the measure lists more than a dozen CN codes across chapters 21, 23 and 35.
What to watch
- Whether the EU definitive regulation keeps texturized material in scope. The exclusion request was rejected “at this stage of the investigation” — language that leaves the question open at definitive stage. If it is reversed, EU and US scope converge and a large share of plant-based meat inputs moves out of the duty.
- Whether retroactive collection is triggered on registered EU entries. Registration since 21 October 2025 makes this live.
- Whether Canada’s terminations survive re-investigation. Four exporters currently ship to Canada duty-free on the dumping side while facing three-figure US margins. That is the most commercially exploitable gap in the current picture, and the most likely to close.
- Whether US rates move at the first administrative review. The 122.19% separate rate is an investigation-period figure, not a permanent one.
- Whether pea protein trade friction shows up in finished-product pricing. Our analysis of hybrid meat ingredients quoting a discount to beef noted that plant protein suppliers are increasingly specified by inclusion rate. Duties of this magnitude on a major input are a test of how much of that discount is structural.
For operators already tracking the EUDR compliance deadline, this is the second instrument in eighteen months to make the origin of a plant input a first-order commercial variable rather than a procurement detail.