Canada condemns US agricultural aid system before WTO

Canada very recently requested discussions at the WTO in order to lodge a complaint against the Unites States concerning its support programme for corn producers.
The latter have received 18 billion dollars over the past two years, profoundly destabilising the global corn market, especially as the US accounts for 60% of worldwide production.

However, through questioning this aid and the economic repercussions on their Canadian counterparts, it is the entire US system of agricultural aid – the Farm Bill – that has been denounced.

Indeed Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, says that the Farm Bill "has significant distorting effects on the markets and runs counter to commitments made by Washington at the close of the Uruguay Round".

This official objection to the US agricultural support system is not the first, since Brazil previously lodged a successful complaint with the WTO in relation to a different case that was of strategic interest to the US: cotton. This shows that opposition to the US Farm Bill is shared by an increasing number of countries that will no longer hesitate to appeal to the WTO for a decision.

As chance would have it, the timetable is set for the US Congress soon to debate a new agriculture law to replace the Farm Bill of 2002, which is due to expire. The federal government and Congress will feel the weight of these repeated challenges as they look towards reforming a system that appeared to the WTO to be very protective of US interests.
However, when it comes to agriculture, it is highly likely that a certain consensus will prevail between the Republicans and Democrats and that the decision taken will safeguard the essential elements of marketing loans and countercyclical payments with a "pinch" of revenue insurance.