Development Blogs.com

A report in the Financial Times by John Thornhill leads with a remarkable quote from French President Nicolas Sarkozy warning the EU that he would block a proposed World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on agriculture that would reduce European production incentives: In a world where there are 800m poor people who cannot satisfy their hunger and where a kid dies every 30 seconds from hunger, I will never accept a reduction in agricultural production on the altar of global liberalism.President Sarkozy is happy to have French farmers feed poor, hungry people in developing countries, but not happy to have those people improve their livelihoods by competing with French farmers on a level playing field. According to the OECD, between a quarter and a third of European Union...

This post is joint with Tom Slayton, a rice trade expert and former editor of The Rice Trader Today in Tokyo, Japan's Vice Minister for Agriculture, Toshirou Shirasu, told reporters that Japan plans to export 200,000 tons of rice to the Philippines "as fast as possible." This confirmed sale comes on top of 50,000 tons of Japanese rice previously under discussion. Even the anticipation of these sales had done much to take the speculative steam out of over-heated global rice markets, as we reported towards the end of last week (see "Rice Prices Fall After Congressional Hearings But Crisis Not Over Yet"), so with some sales now officially confirmed we can hope to see further easing of speculative pressures. The lightening-fast turn around in just one week since CGD...

Congratulations to former CGD Visiting Fellow (via the Fulbright Scholar Program) Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya for his appointment as Bangladesh's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization. At the WTO, Dr. Bhattacharya will no doubt continue to work on issues that he was working on while at the Center, albeit as an advocate for his government rather than as an academic. During Deb's visit I had the pleasure of co-authoring an issue brief with him on Bangladesh's adjustment to the phase-out of textile and apparel quotas. He will also no doubt want to address the tariff peaks on US imports that hit his country particularly hard. He is going to Geneva during a particularly difficult time, with prospects of a Doha revival fading fast. We here at the...

For poor developing country farmers and their advocates, the farm bill that passed the House of Representatives on Friday could hardly be worse news. Dissatisfaction with existing farm legislation is widespread and, with commodity prices high, it seemed as though a real opportunity existed to both reform America’s costly and inequitable farm policy and give the stalled Doha Round of trade negotiations a boost. But those hopes have been at least temporarily dashed. [See Washington Post article and House Committee on Agriculture website for more on House passage of the farm bill.] Reform seems like a no-brainer, since more than half of all American farmers, mostly those growing fruits and vegetables, do not receive traditional subsidies, and 70 percent of payments go to...

Fred Bergsten of Institute for International Economics is pushing for creation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific Region (FTAAP) -- a plan B to get the world back on track given the faltering Doha Round. An FTAAP with the U.S., Japan, and China and the 18 other current members of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group) constitute half the world economy. He makes a good argument. Doesn't it also apply to the dormant FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas) negotiations? The U.S. resisted making any deal on agriculture with Brazil and the other Latin American countries pending the Doha deal. Won't the U.S. have to yield on agriculture in an FTAAP, and will whatever the Asians get on U.S. agriculture be enough for the Latins?...

While there is no particular reason that U.S. negotiators should make the first move to revive the Doha Round trade negotiations--Washington’s sins are not the greatest nor its offer the weakest--the U.S. should nonetheless lead and put the spotlight back where it belongs--on the E.U. and India. Given the ease with which the U.S. could improve its offer, it is nearly incomprehensible that the Americans chose instead to let the talks collapse in Geneva this past weekend. As shown in the figure, OECD Producer Support Estimates as Percent of Gross Farm Receipts (pdf), adapted from my new book, Delivering on Doha: Farm Trade and the Poor, the United States is by no means the worst offender when it comes to supporting its agricultural producers. As a share of farm receipts, U.S....

In a hugely disappointing outcome, International trade negotiators made so little progress in Geneva this past weekend that they gave up and went home early. The lack of leadership was stunning and blame can be spread widely. Despite the great gains that India has reaped in recent years from globalization, its trade negotiator decided that a World Cup game was more important than arriving at a key negotiating session on time. European Union negotiators indicated a willingness to accept larger average tariff cuts on farm products, but insisted on extensive exceptions for "sensitive" products that would substantially undercut the potential for increased access to its markets. Perhaps most surprising of all was the refusal of the American negotiators to show any...