The green barrier to free trade
C. P. Chandrasekhar
Jayati Ghosh
As the March 31 deadline for completing the "modalities" stage of the proposed new round of negotiations on global agricultural trade nears, hopes of an agreement are increasingly waning. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine the factors and the players constraining the realisation of such an agreement.
AT THE END of the latest round of meetings of the agricultural negotiations committee of the WTO, the optimism that negotiators would meet the March 31 deadline for working out numerical targets, formulas and other "modalities" through which countries can frame their liberalisation commitments in a new full-fledged round of trade negotiations has almost disappeared. That target was important for two reasons.
First, it is now becoming clear, that even more than was true during the Uruguay Round, forging an agreement in the agricultural area is bound to prove extremely difficult.
Progress in the agricultural negotiations was key to persuading the unconvinced that a new `Doha Round' of trade negotiations is useful and feasible.
Second, the Doha declaration made agricultural negotiations one part of a `single undertaking' to be completed by January 1, 2005. That is, in a take `all-or-nothing' scheme, countries had to arrive at, and be bound by, agreements in all areas in which negotiations were to be initiated in the new round. This means that if agreement is not worked out with regard to agriculture, there would be no change in the multilateral trade regime governing industry, services or related areas and no progress in new areas, such as competition policy, foreign investment and public procurement, all of which are crucial to the economic agenda of the developed countries.
The factors making agriculture the sticking point on this occasion are numerous. As in the last Round, there is little agreement among the developed countries themselves on the appropriate shape of the global agricultural trade regime.
There are substantial differences in the agenda of the US, the EU and the developed countries within the Cairns group of agricultural exporters. When the rich and the powerful disagree, a global consensus is not easy to come by.
But that is not all. Even if an agreement is stitched up between the rich nations, through manoeuvres such as the Blair House accord, getting the rest of the world to go along would be more difficult this time.
This is because the outcomes in the agricultural trade area since the implementation of the Uruguay Round (UR) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) began have fallen far short of expectations. In the course of Round, advocates of the UR regime had promised global production adjustments that would increase the value of world agricultural trade and an increase in developing country share of such trade.
As Chart 1 shows, global production volumes continued to rise after 1994 when the implementation of the Uruguay Round began, with signs of tapering off only in 2000 and 2001. As is widely known, this increase in production occurred in the developed countries as well.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the volume of world trade continued to rise as well after 1994 (Chart 2). The real shift occurred in agricultural prices which, after some buoyancy between 1993
and 1995, have declined thereafter, and particularly sharply after 1997. It is this decline in unit values that resulted in a situation where the value of world trade stagnated and then declined after 1995, when the implementation of the Uruguay Round began.
As Table 1 shows, there was a sharp fall in the rate of growth of global agricultural trade between the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s, with the decline in growth in the 1990s being due to the particularly poor performance during the 1998 to 2001 period.
Price declines and stagnation in agricultural trade values in the wake of the UR Agreement on Agriculture were accompanied and partly influenced by the persisting regionalisation of world agricultural trade.
The foci of such regionalisation were Western Europe and Asia, with 32 and 11 per cent of global agricultural trade being intra-Western European and intra-Asian trade respectively (Chart 3). What is noteworthy, however, is that agricultural exports accounted for a much higher share of both merchandise and primary products trade in North America and Western Europe (besides Latin America and Africa) than it did for Asia.
Thus, despite being the developed regions of the world, agricultural production and exports were important influences on the economic performance of North America and Western Europe. It is, therefore, not surprising that Europe is keen on maintaining its agricultural sector through protection, while the US is keen on expanding its role in world agricultural markets by subsidising its own farmers and forcing other countries to open up their markets. The problem is that the US has been more successful in prising open developing country markets than the large EU market.
Thus, out of $104 billion worth of exports from North America in 2001, $34 billion went to Asia and $15 billion to Latin America, whereas exports to Europe amounted to $14 billion.
The Cairns group of exporting countries (Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay), for some of whom at least agricultural exports are extremely important, want world market to be freed of protection as well as the surpluses that result from huge domestic support in the US and the EC.
We must note that $35 billion of the $63 billion of exports from Latin America went to the US and the EU. More open markets and less domestic support in those destinations is, therefore, crucial for the region.
The fact that Europe has been successful in its effort at retaining its agricultural space with the help of a Common Agricultural Policy that both supports and subsidises its agricultural producers is clear from Chart 4, which shows that intra-EC trade which accounted for 74 per cent of EU exports in 1990, continued to account for 73 per cent of total EU exports in 1995 and 2001.
But North America, with far fewer countries in its fold, has also been quite insular. Close to a third of North American exports are inter-regional. Little has changed since the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture.
It is widely accepted that three sets of actors account for this failure of the AoA:
First, in order to push through an agreement when there were signs that the Uruguay Round was faltering, the liberalisation of agricultural trade in the developed countries was not pushed far enough;
Second, is the ability to use "loopholes", especially those in the form of inadequately well-defined Green and Blue Box measures, in the AoA, to continue to support and protect farmers on the grounds that such support was non-trade distorting; and
Finally, there are violations of even the lax UR rules in the course of implementation, which have been aided by the failure of the agreement to ensure transparency in implementation.
Not surprisingly, some countries, especially the Cairns group of exporting countries, have proposed an ambitious agenda of liberalisation in the agricultural area.
Tariffs are to be reduced sharply, using the "Swiss formula", which would ensure that the proportionate reduction in the tariffs imposed by a country would be larger, the higher is the prevailing bound or applied tariff in that country.
中文翻译：
题目：自由贸易中的绿色壁垒
作者：C. P. Chandrasekhar 、Jayati Ghosh
在A 完自由化的承诺在其最新一轮会议的农业谈判委员会，世界贸易组织，乐观地认为，谈判的框架将在3月31日最后期限为制定数字指标，公式和其他“方式，哪些国家可以”通过新的全面谈判回合贸易几乎已经消失。这一目标是重要的原因有两个。
第一，它现在越来越清楚，那更是在报道比乌拉圭回合谈判，达成协议，建立一个地区的农业必然是极为困难的证明。 在农业谈判进展的关键是说服不相信一个新的`多哈回合谈判中对贸易是有益的，可行的。第二，多哈宣言作出承诺的农业谈判的一部分单从`要完成2005年1月1日。也就是说，在采取' 全有或没有什么计划，国家已经达成，并约束，是协议中的所有领域中的谈判将要开展的新一轮谈判。这意味着，如果协议不能进行农业合作方面，将不会有政权更替的多边贸易行业管理，服务或相关的领域，外国采购和公共投资在没有取得任何进展的新领域，如竞争政策，所有其中至为重要，发达国家经济议程的。点上的因素使这次农业的坚持是多方面的。由于在最后一轮，有一点是一致的贸易体制中的农业发达国家的全球自己在适当的形状。农产品出口有很大的差异在议程中的美国，凯恩斯集团和欧盟国家内部的发展。当富人和强大的反对，一个全球性的共识是不容易找到。但这还不是全部。即使协议被缝了贫富之间的国家，通过演习，如布莱尔大厦协议，得到了世界各地的去沿着这将是更加困难的时间。这是因为协议开始对农业（农业协定）的成果）在农产品贸易领域实施以来，乌拉圭回合（乌拉圭回合的状况远远没有达到人们的期望。乌拉圭回合的谈判过程中，政权主张乌拉圭回合的承诺，全球生产了调整，将增加世界农产品贸易的价值，以及在发展贸易的增加等国分享
毫不奇怪，因此，世界贸易额持续上升，以及1994年后（图2）。真正的转变发生在这之后，1993年和1995年之间的一些浮力，随后有所下降，特别是1997年后，农产品价格急剧。正是这种单位价值下降的情况下，在世界贸易额的停滞，然后在1995年以后，当乌拉圭回合开始实施下降的结果。如表1所示，有一个在全球农业贸易的增长之间的80年代和90年代后半率急剧下降随着增长，特别是由于20世纪90年代下降表现不佳，在1998至2001年时期。价格下降和在乌拉圭回合农业协议后农产品贸易值分别陪同下，部分停滞的世界农产品贸易的影响，坚持区域化。这种区域化灶32和11被占全球农业内部的西欧和亚洲内部贸易分别贸易（图3）的百分之西欧和亚洲。值得注意的是什么，但是，是农产品出口占了两个商品，在北美和西欧（除拉丁美洲和非洲）贸易的主要产品所占的比重远远比亚洲一样。
因此，尽管作为世界发达地区，农业生产和出口对北美和西欧的经济表现的重要影响。 这是，因此，毫不奇怪，欧洲热衷于维持其通过保护农业部门，而美国是热衷于扩大自己的农民进行补贴，并迫使其他国家开放其市场，其在世界农产品市场的作用。问题是，美国一直在撬更比欧盟大市场的开放发展中国家市场的成功。
因此，出于价值1040亿美元来自北美，2001年美国出口340亿美元到150亿美元的亚洲和拉丁美洲，而对欧洲的出口总额达140亿美元。作者：（阿根廷，澳大利亚，玻利维亚，巴西，加拿大，智利，哥伦比亚，哥斯达黎加，危地马拉，印度尼西亚，马来西亚，新西兰，巴拉圭，菲律宾，南非，泰国和乌拉圭）出口国的凯恩斯集团，其中部分为至少农产品出口极为重要，希望世界市场被释放保护以及庞大的盈余，从在美国和欧盟国内支持的结果。
我们必须指出，美元的63美元，出口350亿亿来自拉丁美洲前往美国和欧盟。进一步开放市场，减少在这些目的地，因此，该地区的国内支持至关重要。鉴于欧洲一直保持与一个共同的农业政策支持和帮助，无论它的农业生产者的补贴，从图4，这表明内欧共体贸易的占百分之74的农业空间，明确努力成功的事实在1990年欧盟的出口，继续占欧盟总出口总额在1995年和2001年的百分之七十三。但是北美，在其折叠国家少得多，也比较封闭。接近北美出口的三分之一是跨区域。几乎没有改变，因为乌拉圭回合农业协定。它已被广泛接受，有三个演员设置此帐户的农产品协议的失败：
首先，为了推动通过一项协议，当时有迹象表明，乌拉圭回合谈判处于动荡之中，农产品贸易自由化的发达国家没有将远远不够;
其次，是能够使用“漏洞“，特别是在不当的明确界定，绿，蓝箱措施的农产品协议，构成人士继续支持和保护，理由是这种支持的非贸易扭曲的农民;
最后，还有的甚至是宽松乌拉圭回合规则，在执行过程中，已通过该协议，以确保实施的透明度失败资助的行为。
毫不奇怪，一些国家，特别是出口国的凯恩斯集团，提出在农业领域的自由化雄心勃勃的议程。关税要大幅度减少，采用“瑞士公式“，这将确保在一国征收的关税削减比例将更大，更高，是当时的绑定或适用于该国的关税。
The green barrier to free trade
C. P. Chandrasekhar
Jayati Ghosh
As the March 31 deadline for completing the "modalities" stage of the proposed new round of negotiations on global agricultural trade nears, hopes of an agreement are increasingly waning. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine the factors and the players constraining the realisation of such an agreement.
AT THE END of the latest round of meetings of the agricultural negotiations committee of the WTO, the optimism that negotiators would meet the March 31 deadline for working out numerical targets, formulas and other "modalities" through which countries can frame their liberalisation commitments in a new full-fledged round of trade negotiations has almost disappeared. That target was important for two reasons.
First, it is now becoming clear, that even more than was true during the Uruguay Round, forging an agreement in the agricultural area is bound to prove extremely difficult.
Progress in the agricultural negotiations was key to persuading the unconvinced that a new `Doha Round' of trade negotiations is useful and feasible.
Second, the Doha declaration made agricultural negotiations one part of a `single undertaking' to be completed by January 1, 2005. That is, in a take `all-or-nothing' scheme, countries had to arrive at, and be bound by, agreements in all areas in which negotiations were to be initiated in the new round. This means that if agreement is not worked out with regard to agriculture, there would be no change in the multilateral trade regime governing industry, services or related areas and no progress in new areas, such as competition policy, foreign investment and public procurement, all of which are crucial to the economic agenda of the developed countries.
The factors making agriculture the sticking point on this occasion are numerous. As in the last Round, there is little agreement among the developed countries themselves on the appropriate shape of the global agricultural trade regime.
There are substantial differences in the agenda of the US, the EU and the developed countries within the Cairns group of agricultural exporters. When the rich and the powerful disagree, a global consensus is not easy to come by.
But that is not all. Even if an agreement is stitched up between the rich nations, through manoeuvres such as the Blair House accord, getting the rest of the world to go along would be more difficult this time.
This is because the outcomes in the agricultural trade area since the implementation of the Uruguay Round (UR) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) began have fallen far short of expectations. In the course of Round, advocates of the UR regime had promised global production adjustments that would increase the value of world agricultural trade and an increase in developing country share of such trade.
As Chart 1 shows, global production volumes continued to rise after 1994 when the implementation of the Uruguay Round began, with signs of tapering off only in 2000 and 2001. As is widely known, this increase in production occurred in the developed countries as well.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the volume of world trade continued to rise as well after 1994 (Chart 2). The real shift occurred in agricultural prices which, after some buoyancy between 1993
and 1995, have declined thereafter, and particularly sharply after 1997. It is this decline in unit values that resulted in a situation where the value of world trade stagnated and then declined after 1995, when the implementation of the Uruguay Round began.
As Table 1 shows, there was a sharp fall in the rate of growth of global agricultural trade between the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s, with the decline in growth in the 1990s being due to the particularly poor performance during the 1998 to 2001 period.
Price declines and stagnation in agricultural trade values in the wake of the UR Agreement on Agriculture were accompanied and partly influenced by the persisting regionalisation of world agricultural trade.
The foci of such regionalisation were Western Europe and Asia, with 32 and 11 per cent of global agricultural trade being intra-Western European and intra-Asian trade respectively (Chart 3). What is noteworthy, however, is that agricultural exports accounted for a much higher share of both merchandise and primary products trade in North America and Western Europe (besides Latin America and Africa) than it did for Asia.
Thus, despite being the developed regions of the world, agricultural production and exports were important influences on the economic performance of North America and Western Europe. It is, therefore, not surprising that Europe is keen on maintaining its agricultural sector through protection, while the US is keen on expanding its role in world agricultural markets by subsidising its own farmers and forcing other countries to open up their markets. The problem is that the US has been more successful in prising open developing country markets than the large EU market.
Thus, out of $104 billion worth of exports from North America in 2001, $34 billion went to Asia and $15 billion to Latin America, whereas exports to Europe amounted to $14 billion.
The Cairns group of exporting countries (Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay), for some of whom at least agricultural exports are extremely important, want world market to be freed of protection as well as the surpluses that result from huge domestic support in the US and the EC.
We must note that $35 billion of the $63 billion of exports from Latin America went to the US and the EU. More open markets and less domestic support in those destinations is, therefore, crucial for the region.
The fact that Europe has been successful in its effort at retaining its agricultural space with the help of a Common Agricultural Policy that both supports and subsidises its agricultural producers is clear from Chart 4, which shows that intra-EC trade which accounted for 74 per cent of EU exports in 1990, continued to account for 73 per cent of total EU exports in 1995 and 2001.
But North America, with far fewer countries in its fold, has also been quite insular. Close to a third of North American exports are inter-regional. Little has changed since the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture.
It is widely accepted that three sets of actors account for this failure of the AoA:
First, in order to push through an agreement when there were signs that the Uruguay Round was faltering, the liberalisation of agricultural trade in the developed countries was not pushed far enough;
Second, is the ability to use "loopholes", especially those in the form of inadequately well-defined Green and Blue Box measures, in the AoA, to continue to support and protect farmers on the grounds that such support was non-trade distorting; and
Finally, there are violations of even the lax UR rules in the course of implementation, which have been aided by the failure of the agreement to ensure transparency in implementation.
Not surprisingly, some countries, especially the Cairns group of exporting countries, have proposed an ambitious agenda of liberalisation in the agricultural area.
Tariffs are to be reduced sharply, using the "Swiss formula", which would ensure that the proportionate reduction in the tariffs imposed by a country would be larger, the higher is the prevailing bound or applied tariff in that country.
中文翻译：
题目：自由贸易中的绿色壁垒
作者：C. P. Chandrasekhar 、Jayati Ghosh
在A 完自由化的承诺在其最新一轮会议的农业谈判委员会，世界贸易组织，乐观地认为，谈判的框架将在3月31日最后期限为制定数字指标，公式和其他“方式，哪些国家可以”通过新的全面谈判回合贸易几乎已经消失。这一目标是重要的原因有两个。
第一，它现在越来越清楚，那更是在报道比乌拉圭回合谈判，达成协议，建立一个地区的农业必然是极为困难的证明。 在农业谈判进展的关键是说服不相信一个新的`多哈回合谈判中对贸易是有益的，可行的。第二，多哈宣言作出承诺的农业谈判的一部分单从`要完成2005年1月1日。也就是说，在采取' 全有或没有什么计划，国家已经达成，并约束，是协议中的所有领域中的谈判将要开展的新一轮谈判。这意味着，如果协议不能进行农业合作方面，将不会有政权更替的多边贸易行业管理，服务或相关的领域，外国采购和公共投资在没有取得任何进展的新领域，如竞争政策，所有其中至为重要，发达国家经济议程的。点上的因素使这次农业的坚持是多方面的。由于在最后一轮，有一点是一致的贸易体制中的农业发达国家的全球自己在适当的形状。农产品出口有很大的差异在议程中的美国，凯恩斯集团和欧盟国家内部的发展。当富人和强大的反对，一个全球性的共识是不容易找到。但这还不是全部。即使协议被缝了贫富之间的国家，通过演习，如布莱尔大厦协议，得到了世界各地的去沿着这将是更加困难的时间。这是因为协议开始对农业（农业协定）的成果）在农产品贸易领域实施以来，乌拉圭回合（乌拉圭回合的状况远远没有达到人们的期望。乌拉圭回合的谈判过程中，政权主张乌拉圭回合的承诺，全球生产了调整，将增加世界农产品贸易的价值，以及在发展贸易的增加等国分享
毫不奇怪，因此，世界贸易额持续上升，以及1994年后（图2）。真正的转变发生在这之后，1993年和1995年之间的一些浮力，随后有所下降，特别是1997年后，农产品价格急剧。正是这种单位价值下降的情况下，在世界贸易额的停滞，然后在1995年以后，当乌拉圭回合开始实施下降的结果。如表1所示，有一个在全球农业贸易的增长之间的80年代和90年代后半率急剧下降随着增长，特别是由于20世纪90年代下降表现不佳，在1998至2001年时期。价格下降和在乌拉圭回合农业协议后农产品贸易值分别陪同下，部分停滞的世界农产品贸易的影响，坚持区域化。这种区域化灶32和11被占全球农业内部的西欧和亚洲内部贸易分别贸易（图3）的百分之西欧和亚洲。值得注意的是什么，但是，是农产品出口占了两个商品，在北美和西欧（除拉丁美洲和非洲）贸易的主要产品所占的比重远远比亚洲一样。
因此，尽管作为世界发达地区，农业生产和出口对北美和西欧的经济表现的重要影响。 这是，因此，毫不奇怪，欧洲热衷于维持其通过保护农业部门，而美国是热衷于扩大自己的农民进行补贴，并迫使其他国家开放其市场，其在世界农产品市场的作用。问题是，美国一直在撬更比欧盟大市场的开放发展中国家市场的成功。
因此，出于价值1040亿美元来自北美，2001年美国出口340亿美元到150亿美元的亚洲和拉丁美洲，而对欧洲的出口总额达140亿美元。作者：（阿根廷，澳大利亚，玻利维亚，巴西，加拿大，智利，哥伦比亚，哥斯达黎加，危地马拉，印度尼西亚，马来西亚，新西兰，巴拉圭，菲律宾，南非，泰国和乌拉圭）出口国的凯恩斯集团，其中部分为至少农产品出口极为重要，希望世界市场被释放保护以及庞大的盈余，从在美国和欧盟国内支持的结果。
我们必须指出，美元的63美元，出口350亿亿来自拉丁美洲前往美国和欧盟。进一步开放市场，减少在这些目的地，因此，该地区的国内支持至关重要。鉴于欧洲一直保持与一个共同的农业政策支持和帮助，无论它的农业生产者的补贴，从图4，这表明内欧共体贸易的占百分之74的农业空间，明确努力成功的事实在1990年欧盟的出口，继续占欧盟总出口总额在1995年和2001年的百分之七十三。但是北美，在其折叠国家少得多，也比较封闭。接近北美出口的三分之一是跨区域。几乎没有改变，因为乌拉圭回合农业协定。它已被广泛接受，有三个演员设置此帐户的农产品协议的失败：
首先，为了推动通过一项协议，当时有迹象表明，乌拉圭回合谈判处于动荡之中，农产品贸易自由化的发达国家没有将远远不够;
其次，是能够使用“漏洞“，特别是在不当的明确界定，绿，蓝箱措施的农产品协议，构成人士继续支持和保护，理由是这种支持的非贸易扭曲的农民;
最后，还有的甚至是宽松乌拉圭回合规则，在执行过程中，已通过该协议，以确保实施的透明度失败资助的行为。
毫不奇怪，一些国家，特别是出口国的凯恩斯集团，提出在农业领域的自由化雄心勃勃的议程。关税要大幅度减少，采用“瑞士公式“，这将确保在一国征收的关税削减比例将更大，更高，是当时的绑定或适用于该国的关税。