|| Home || SEARCH|| Contact || Free Research Publications  ||  Eshop || Privacy Statement ||

Download full report (PDF 320k - HINT: right click and save the file to your hard disk before opening)

AGRICULTURAL TRADE POLICY MADE EASY -
Making sense of trade policy  for farmers, policymakers  and the public

Prepared by  Andrew Stoeckel and George Reeves  Centre for International Economics
  RIRDC Publication No. 04/170

WHY THIS BOOKLET
Trade policy negotiations can easily descend into a debate  about acronyms and GATT-speak with words like ‘modalities’  and ‘multifunctionality’ cropping up in discussions  and meetings. A look at the glossary at the back of this  booklet is proof of that. The special ‘language’ and the  unnecessarily complicated concepts and positions adopted  during negotiations aimed at reducing distortions to trade  are a barrier to wide understanding of what trade policy is  about.

The lack of understanding about trade policy and the benefits  from removing distortions to trade in all their guises has  itself become a barrier to more liberal trade. Nowhere is  this more apparent than in agricultural trade policy. The  large restrictions on agricultural trade are now one of the  major sticking points in the current round of multilateral  trade negotiations aimed at liberalising international trade  — the Doha round of negotiations, which, as another  example of the point being made, is called the ‘Doha  Development Agenda’.

Concepts used in agricultural trade policy such as the ‘three  pillars’ and ‘green boxes’, ‘blue boxes’ and so-on may be  clear to negotiators, but they are not clear to a wider  audience. Too few people — both farmers and the wider  public — understand what is at stake and what should  happen.

The basic premise of trade and trade policy, after all, is very  simple. People choose to trade because it makes them  better off and when trade barriers and trade distorting  measures are removed there is more competition and more  people become even better off. Subsidies, both direct and  indirect, can and usually do lead to more trade, so it has to  be stressed that trade negotiations are about trade  liberalisation, not trade expansion. Just why these simple  propositions aren’t appreciated in the case of agricultural  trade is partly due to the lack of understanding of trade  policy and partly due to raw politics. Both are demystified  in this booklet.

 

Site map Contact us Feedback Links Disclaimer Privacy Statement