OK, so having raged against the US Farm Bill in this thread this son of a son of son of a sheep farmer can only acknowledge the latest US proposal to reduce farm subsidies as a step in the right direction, and hopefully the start of a very good thing.
So could somebody please explain to me the politics behind this move which would seem at face value to be a substantial reversal in policy?
Trade negotiations take a very long time. Economists are still arguing about what an amber box agricultural policy is and whether it is a meaningful distinction anyway. The US farm bill was presumably aimed at the upcoming Congressional elections - but any deal on subsidies and trade are a way off.
So that’s one thing - governments are like Saint Augustine: they want to be chaste, but not just yet. Most see the virtues of freer trade but succumb to the temptations of the protectionist lobbies in the short term. Of course, since the long run is just a succession of short runs…
Another thing is that the some of the Europeans (pretty much everyone except the French, and even they’ve been making kind of encouraging noises) have been talking about reform of the CAP. The way that the GATT (and now the WTO) has been able to get some business done is by multilateralism. Governments can help themselves against their own weakness by extracting “concessions” in return for reducing their own tariffs and trade-distorting subsidies.
So whilst it might be true that the US farm bill screws US consumers and industries other than the agricultural industries in a background of other bloc’s given policies it’s a tempting policy for the US. But if US subsidies can be wound back in exchange for greater access to European markets, freer trade becomes more politically saleable. It is a weird situation: the “concessions” negotiated are usually things that the country would be well advised to dump unilaterally.
So they’re my guesses: 1. Timeframe. 2. The sniff of multilateralism and the possiblity of reform of the CAP.
Time to implement is certainly a factor hawthorne, it’s not difficult to promise something that you know you’ll never be asked to deliver.
But I don’t really see how the swing to a more unilateral US philosophy in foreign affairs/trade would be swayed by faint stirrings of a multilateral agenda from the Europeans.
I was also wondering on how this was being spun for US domestic consumption, or for that matter whether is even makes the radar screens.