China’s championing of globalisation should be great news for exporters in Latin America, where trade with the Asian giant has ballooned since the early 2000s. But trade growth has stalled and, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), this is not only because of the bursting of the commodities bubble. High tariffs and other barriers both in China and in Latin America show that free-trade rhetoric has yet to be matched by action.

In a recent report, “Uncovering the Barriers of the China-Latin America and Caribbean Trade”, the IDB details tariffs and other “discriminatory” policies afflicting the relationship. Their presence has contributed to a decline in trade between the two, which slowed to $247bn in 2016, a 7 per cent drop from the previous year and the third consecutive annual fall (see chart).

According to the IDB, Latin America’s farmers have been hit particularly hard. Beijing imposes tariffs of 17.3 per cent on agricultural produce from Argentina, 17 per cent on that from Brazil and 16.1 per cent from Mexico, compared with its average tariffs of 13.4 per cent for the farm sector worldwide. The difference matters: soya alone represents a fifth of the region’s total exports to China.