Once the Doha Round has been completed, the agreements will still have to be incorporated into member country statutes and regulations.
In the United States, important agreements on domestic subsidies for farmers will need to be incorporated into the next farm bill.
For background on the farm bills back to 1933 - and with links to developments on the 2007 bill - try the National Agricultural Law Center .
Here is a great paper on the interaction between U.S. domestic farm support policy, as implemented in farm bills, and the Doha Round of negotiations: The US Farm Bill and the Doha Negotiations: On Parallel Tracks or a Collision Course? (Robert Thompson, International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council Issue Brief #15, October 2005)
If the download doesn't work, you can get a copy of the paper from Kai Bucher at [email protected].
Thompson describes the joint evolution of U.S. farm support policy
and the Doha Round agricultural trade negotiations in recent years. He also looks at
factors, including WTO dispute settlement cases and the Doha
negotiations, that will affect the content of the next (2007) farm
bill.
How does the timing of the upcoming farm bill interact with Doha Round timing:
Field hearings and farmer listening sessions on the 2007 Farm Bill started in 2005, with hearings in Washington, DC continuing through 2006, in anticipation of writing the next Farm Bill in 2007. The most likely time for the Doha Round to conclude is June 2007, when the current US Trade Promotion Authority (“fast-track” negotiating authority) expires. If history is any guide, this will be an effective decision-forcing date to bring the WTO negotiations to closure.
Any changes in farm policy agreed to in the DDA agricultural agreement can then be implemented in the 2007 Farm Bill. US negotiators will be hard-pressed to meet this deadline as they would need to be prejudging by December 2005, what the next Congress will be willing to do in the 2007 Farm Bill. However, if the WTO negotiations can be concluded by the end of 2006, then the necessary notifications can be sent to the Congress early in 2007, and the agreements can be prepared in time for a signing ceremony by June 2006. This would dovetail with the timetable of the 2007 Farm Bill.
What's the most likely outcome:
If one had to gamble, the safest best would be that the commodity programs in the 2007 Farm Bill will not look a lot different than at present. With the definition of the special and sensitive products and the redefinition of the Blue Box to include counter-cyclical payments in the WTO Framework Agreement of 2004, there is a significant probability of the Doha Round ending with a minimalist agreement in agriculture that requires little change in US farm programs. Based on their behavior in past rounds of multilateral trade negotiations, the United States and the European Union would probably go along with this.
That reflects U.S. farmer predilections:
Among US farm organizations there is little enthusiasm for trade negotiations or even for exports in general. Many American farmers are taking a defeatist attitude about their ability to compete internationally. They see the world market as a zero-sum game and are betting their future on ethanol and biodiesel instead. Unless farm organizations enthusiastically embrace whatever is coming out of the Doha Round, one should not expect the Congressional agriculture committees to do so either.
But playing it safe risks losing the big prize:
The (almost) three billion people to be added to the world’s population in the first half of the 21st century plus the three billion people (almost half of the world’s present population) who live on less than two dollars per day are the only potential growth market for world agriculture. But only if they experience broad-based economic growth will they have the purchasing power to translate need into market demand, and trade is one of the most important drivers of economic growth...
How many current and yet-to-be-born low-income consumers are lifted out of poverty will be the most important determinant of the future size of world food and agricultural product markets.
With population growth, urbanization and broad-based economic development, one can expect world food demand to double by 2050. Because many countries, especially in Asia, have a much larger fraction of the world’s population than of the arable land, growth in their food demand will quickly outstrip their production capacity, and they will need to import a larger part of their food supply. However, this will happen only if they can export products in which they have a comparative advantage to earn the foreign exchange needed to buy goods in which other countries have a comparative advantage, including part of their food supply. A more open trading system can make an essential contribution of economic growth.
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