The never ending agricultural trade liberalization: three substantial problems

Résumé 0

"Agricultural Trade Liberalization has been one of the mostcontroversial issues in International Trade. The conservativeposition assumed by WTO Members regarding the tradeliberalization of agricultural barriers is rooted, amongst otherreason, on the fact that countries do not want to depend onother governments for food (National Security). Due to thespecial treatment that countries give to agricultural goods,WTO Members negotiated in the Uruguay Round a separateagreement for agricultural trade, tailor-made for these goods,with an specific object and purpose: establish a fair andmarket-oriented agricultural trade policy. The Agreement on Agriculture is built upon three pillars oninto which WTO Members made commitments to reducemarket protection. Accordingly, members made commitmentson the areas of market access, domestic support and exportsubsidies. Since domestic support and export subsidies isnowadays one of the most controversial subjects when talkingabout international trade, this article will focus exclusively onthis two issues, including both its regulation, and effects. Regarding Domestic Support Measures, the Agreement onAgriculture classified different types of support as Boxes.The first type of support are Green Box Measures whichinclude all those domestic support payments that are deemedto have no or at most minimal trade distorting effects; AmberBox Measures which are those measures that do have tradedistorting effects, and thus Members are bound to reduce thesekinds of payments. Finally, Blue Box Measures, which aredirect payments made under production limiting programs notsubject to reduction commitments. Regarding Export Subsidies,the Agreement on Agriculture constitutes an exception to thegeneral regime included in the Subsidies and CountervailingMeasures Agreement (hereinafter SCM), as it allows Membersto grant export subsidies provided that they comply both withtheir budgetary outlays and quantity commitment levels.Moreover, it prevents agricultural export subsidies from beingchallenged under SCM provisions if they caused adverseeffects to the interests of other Members."