Posts tagged…Agriculture
Two tracks out of the Doha wasteland?
Thu, May 28 2009Pascal Lamy wants to stir up more action in the WTO's Doha negotiations —at least its appearance—by opening up a 'second front' for the exchanges. One group will battle on to refine the technical rules and one will start a 'show and tell' exploration of the implementation of the rules.
"My own sense is that there is scope to work on these two areas along two simultaneous tracks. One would see…
Read more…U.S. breaks G-20 promise on trade
Sun, May 24 2009
Just to remind you of what they said in April:
"We reaffirm the commitment made in Washington not to raise new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, including within existing WTO limits, not to impose new trade restrictions, and not to create new subsidies to exports." G-20 Communiqué emphasis added
By any measure the re-introduction of an export subsidy for the coddled U.S.…
What if WTO forgot about the rules?
Thu, May 14 2009If you can't agree on what to do, then don't agree. Just, um… do it™.
This—believe it or not— is the latest idea from the bored squad of WTO delegates who find themselves with nothing much to negotiate while trade is in an unprecedented slump and the Doha Round lies on a slab in the cool room.
Their thinking—which they tested with new US Trade Representative Ron Kirk during his recent visit to…
Peru jumps the China FTA queue
Wed, Apr 29 2009This news makes the delay in agreement between Australia and China on an FTA look even more peculiar.
" China and Peru on Tuesday signed a free trade agreement, state media here said, as Beijing continues to seek new markets and reserves of raw materials to fuel its economy… China has become mineral-rich Peru's second largest trading partner after the United States. Peru is a major producer of…
Razzing the Congress party
Thu, Apr 16 2009"[The Indian election] exposes the do-nothing, zero-reform record of Manmohan Singh, prime minister, and his government. More generally, it lays bare India’s huge reform gaps and its brittle, decaying institutions. Finally, it deflates the ‘India hype’ peddled by smooth-talking upper-caste politicians, ambassadors, businessmen, management consultants and some academics"
Extract from an Op Ed by…
Illustrated USDA economic research
Thu, Apr 09 2009This should be fun. Unfortunately the 'interactive' version loads slowly and has 'panes' that make it difficult to view the info-graphics. The (16.8mb!) downloadable version may be better. But the download crawled, so I gave up.
"This book contains a sampling of recent ERS research illustrating the breadth of the Agency’s research on current policy issues: from biofuels to food consumption to…
Competitiveness of U.S. agriculture
Tue, Mar 31 2009
As usual, the export outlook depends more on the dollar exchange-rate than on the impact of recession on underlying demand—at least, from 2010 onwards:
"The main uncertainty for the long run concerns the value of the U.S. dollar compared with currencies of other major trading countries. One possibility is that the dollar will continue to strengthen substantially, especially against the Chinese…
Finding data on WTO Agriculture agreements
Mon, Mar 09 2009The WTO's framework of trade agreements for agricultural policies is complex. The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (supplemented by rules in the GATT, the Subsidies Agreement and the SPS Agreement) regulates the external impacts of countries' border barriers and the impact of their internal market manipulation policies on external competition. It's impossible to make useful assessments of the…
EU incentives for milk production
Sun, Jan 25 2009
The re-introduction of intervention-buying and export subsidies for milk products in the EU comes after the steady fall of EU milk/milk-product prices to near the (undistorted) world market price over the past decade. The 'gap' between the distorted EU price and the undistorted world price is the 'nominal rate of assistance' (NRA) to EU milk that can be plotted in the Agricultural Incentives…
Export subsidies: there they go again
Sun, Jan 25 2009Demonstrating, once again, its cynical regard for the letter of its obligations, the EC Commission has decided to reinstate dairy export subsidies that are primed to lock-in the low world dairy prices that are allegedly their rationale.
"The European Commission has announced plans to artificially boost prices by buying up 139,000 tonnes of diary products at a cost to the public purse of £237…
A Pisgah sight of the Doha deal
Mon, Dec 08 2008(Update: the Ministerial meeting will not take place) Ahead of a likely attempt by WTO Minsiters to spy the promised land before the year is out In one last attempt to wrest consensus from growling discord, the (retiring) Chair of the WTO Agriculture Negotiations has released another version of his 120-page 'modalities' paper (.pdf, about 1mb) for the proposed Doha Round agreement on Agriculture.…
A better way to negotiate on agriculture
Thu, Dec 04 2008Next week, at the Institute for International Trade in Adelaide, Andrew Stoler (Institute Director, former Deputy Director-General of WTO) and I are presenting a conference in our project on future frameworks for WTO agriculture agreements.
In addition to our own research (some linked here) we've commissioned the help of leading agriculture and trade policy research centers in Brazil, China,…