WTO negotiations involving the liberalization of international agricultural exchanges have been suspended because of American intransigence to reformulate their proposal made in October 2005. Any hope of restarting the Doha Round therefore remains dependent for the moment on an evolution in the American position concerning the two following questions:
WTO negotiations involving the liberalization of international agricultural exchanges have been suspended because of American intransigence to reformulate their proposal made in October 2005. Any hope of restarting the Doha Round therefore remains dependent for the moment on an evolution in the American position concerning the two following questions:
> The question of whether the “fast-track” authority, which will expire in June 2007, will be renewed or not by the American Congress.
> And the question of the reform or the renewal of the 2002 American agricultural law (the Farm Bill), which provides, according to Pascal Lamy, “extremely generous subsidies”.
However, no major changes will be made in either of these two questions, because the American elections have rebalanced powers, by conferring a democratic majority in Congress.
We must not therefore expect any turnaround in the American commercial agricultural policy between now and the end of 2008, and therefore no renewal of the fast track, as Daniel Griswold, analyst from the Cato Institute, highlights, “there will be no protectionist reversal in American commercial policy because the balance of power is guaranteed: no law will advance trade liberalization, or even conversely, protectionism”.
At the same time Congress would like to postpone the adoption of the new Farm Bill, which expires in 2007. Democrat congressman Collin Peterson, who is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, is favourable to prolonging the 2002 law by at least one year, and will carry out “no significant change in the current structure of the Farm Bill concerning subsidies”.
Thus the United States commercial policy will remain in “deadlock”, which will make it impossible to bring the Doha Round to a conclusion before 2008. We should therefore take advantage of this latency period, which could be prolonged, to start, as WOAgri proposes, world governance in agriculture to promote the regulated liberalization of international agricultural exchange.
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