Agriculture in the Doha Agenda
The author looks at the OECD domestic political economy associated with ongoing WTO farm negotiations, focusing on the OECD-based coalitions which could be helpful for WTO negotiators. Support from individual final consumers and taxpayers is far fr...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/04/2191896/agriculture-doha-agenda http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18231 |
| Summary: | The author looks at the OECD domestic
political economy associated with ongoing WTO farm
negotiations, focusing on the OECD-based coalitions which
could be helpful for WTO negotiators. Support from
individual final consumers and taxpayers is far from
guaranteed because consumers are spending less and less on
food, and because taxpayers support, more or less willingly,
non-trade concerns, such as environment or food safety, that
they tend (wrongly) to associate with domestic farmers. As a
result, trade negotiators should look at other allies. A
natural candidate is a powerful group of consumers-the
agribusiness industries-for which a reduction of the still
high protection of their products under the Doha Round
requires a corresponding reduction of protection in their
farm inputs. They should also talk to farmers, hence sharpen
their arguments, in particular by focusing on the
distinction between small and large farmers, the latter
being by far the main beneficiaries of the current OECD farm
protectionist policies. |
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