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A Corn Law was first introduced in Britain in 1804, when the landowners, who dominated Parliament, sought to protect their profits by imposing a duty on imported com. During the Napoleonic Wars, it had not been possible to import corn from Europe, which led to an expansion of British wheat farming and to high bread prices. However, farmers feared that when the war came to an end in 1815 the import of foreign corn would lower prices. This fear was justified, and the price of corn fell by 50 per cent between 1812 and 1815. In 1846, the Corn Law had to be finally repealed.
2 These five rounds ofMrNS were Geneva (1947), Annecy (1949), Torquay (1951), Geneva (1956) and the Dillon Round (1960-1961). ' The Cairns Group of 17 agriculture-exporting countries, fonned in 1986, has effectively put agriculture on the multilateral trade agenda and kept it there. The Cairns Group is an excellent example of successful coalition building in the trade area. The 17 Members of this Group are: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay. The Members of the Cairns Group come from four continents and include a wide range of economies, from industrial to the least developed.
4 See World Bank (2004), Chapter 3; as well as Beghin and Aksoy (2003); OECD (2003a); and lngco and Nash (2004).
Ncw Zealand's Ambassador, Tim Groser, is the current Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture of the WTO. '
I- Early in 2004, in various speeches and statements to the press, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy and WU'o Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi exchanged accusations of using "contestable" statistics.
7 the legal basis of an agriculture policy for the entire European Community is defined in Articles 32 through 38 in Title n of the EC Treaty. Agriculture sat high on the agenda of European policymakers, especially at the time when the Treaty of Rome was being negotiated during the 1950s. The memory of postwar food shortages was still vivid and, thus, agriculture constituted a key element from the outset of the European Community. The Treaty of Rome (1957) defined the general objectives of a common agriculture policy. The principles of the CAP were set out at the Stresa Conference in July 1958. In 1960, the CAP mechanisms were adopted by the six founding Member States, and two years later, in 1962, the CAP came into force. The CAP is comprised of a set of rules and mechanisms which regulate the production, trade and processing of agricultural products in the EU, with attention being focused increasingly on rural development. Among the EU's policies, the CAP is regarded as one of the most important policy areas, not only because of its share of the EU budget (almost 50 per cent, and decreasing over the years) and the vast number of people and the extent of the territory directly affected but also because of its symbolic significance and the extent of sovereignty transferred from the national to the European level. The significance of the CAP nowadays is also portrayed by the fact that it is directly related to the Single Market and the European Monetary Union, two key areas in achieving European integration. The objectives of the CAP, as set out in Article 33 of the EC Treaty, are: "(i) to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and by ensuring the rational development of agricultural production and the optimum utilization of the factors of production, in particular labor; (ii) to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture; (iii) to stabilize markets; (iv) to assure the availability of supplies; (v) to ensure that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices." 8These CAP reforms were announced in Luxembourg on 26 June 2003. `3 GTAP is based on Hertel (1997). The GTAP model is a standard, multi-sector model and is becoming highly popular with researchers.
1<1 In The Financial Times of August 2004, Herve Gaymard, the Agriculture Minister of France, was quoted as saying that he would seek a "proper" timetable for the cuts, looking "towards a horizon of 2015 or 2017". 11 These non-tariff barriers included variable import levies, discretionary import licensing and voluntary export restraints.
This was taken up as the reference period because during these years the OHCn economics maximized their support to the agricultural sector.
" The source of statistics throughout this section is World Bank (2()t)4). Chapter 3.
�� According to the WTO tenninology, subsidies in general arc identified by "boxes" which are given the colors of traffic lights: green implies "permitted"; amber means "slow down" or "reduce"; while red stands for "forbidden". In agriculture, things are in general more complicated. The Agriculture Agreement has no red box, although domestic support exceeding the reduction commitment levels in the amber box is prohibited, and there is a blue box for subsidies that are tied to programs that limit production. All domestic support measures considered to distort production and trade (with some exceptions) fall into the amber box, which is defined in Article 6 of the UaAA as all domestic supports except those in the blue and green boxes. These include measures to support prices or subsidies directly related to production quantities. These supports are subject to limits: "de mimmis" minimal supports are allowed (5 per cent ofagricultural production for developed countries, 10 per cent for developing countries); the 30 W ro Members that had larger subsidies than the de millimis levels at the beginning of the post-Uruguay Round reform period had committed to reduce these subsidies.
At the time of writing, the G-21 has the following 22 Members: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Pem, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Venezuela. The role of collegial leaders of the G-21 has been played by Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Refer to WTO (2003b); WTO (2003c); and WTO (2004a) for more details.
Of the three most important international currencies, the Euro acquired a position of strength during the fourth quarter of 2004. I ligh budget and current account deficits caused concern regarding the future health of the U.S. economy. Coupled with this weakness of the U.S. economy, Europe's interest yield advantage as well as geo-political tensions sent the Euro soaring. It peaked on 10 November 2004 at US$ 1.30. Although it soon came down from its high perch by a small margin (to US$ 1.20), it continued to remain strong; at the time of writing, on 17 March 2005, it stood at USS 1.33. In addition, fears surrounding the new respiratory virus hitting Asia left the Yen at its lowest level in four years nis-d-nis the Euro. Japanese investors were aggressively purchasing Euro-dcnominated assets during the fourth quarter of2004.
11 Under the Uann, the United States and other countries agreed to keep the total value of trade-distorting domestic support to farmers from exceeding predetermined ceiling levels for the years 1995-2000. Ceilings were established for each country based on their level of trade-distorting domestic support in the base period 1986—1 988. Under the URAA, ceilings decline from 97 per cent of 1986-1988 base levels in 1995 to 80 per cent in 2000 for the industrial economies. Countries also agree to notify the WTO about the current level of domestic support for each year in the implementation period, 1995 to 2000. The annual level of such support, the Anis, is measured as the sum of certain trade-distorting commodity-specific and non-commodity-specific farm program benefits as defined in the URAA. These Amps benefits include those from direct government payments as well as market price supports that are provided to farmers based on the level of current production, price, resource use or inputs benefits.
19 These details on the agreement on modalities have been gleaned from WTO (2004b). Seekers of more details should refers to this source.
AITIC (Agency for International Trade Information and Cooperation), 2004: Post-Cancún Agenda: The Doha Work Programme Negotiations on Agriculture, AITIC, Geneva, Switzerland, April.
Alderman. H., 2001: What Has Changed Regarding Rural Poverty since Vision to Action? Rural Strategy Background Paper No. 5, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Anderson, K., 1994: Multilateral Trade Negotiations, European Integration and Farm Policy, Economic Policy, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 28-44.
Idem, 1995: Lobbying Incentives and the Pattern of Protection in Rich and Poor Countries, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 401-423.
Idem, 2003: How Can Agricultural Trade Reforms Reduce Poverty? Center for International Economic Studies, Discussion Paper No. 0321, July, University of Adelaide, Australia.
Idem, 2004: Agricultural Trade Reforms and Trade Reforms and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries, in Jayasura and Lloyd (eds.), op. cit., pp. 130-159.
Anderson, K., B. Dimaranan, J. Francois, T. Hertel, B. Hoekmam and W. Martin, 2001: The Cost of Rich (and Poor) Country Protection to Developing Countries, Journal of African Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 227-257.
Anderson, K. and S. Yao, 2003: How Can South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa Gain from the Next WTO Round? Journal of Economic Integration, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 466-481.
Baker, D., 2003: Agriculture in the EU's Eastern Enlargement: The Current Status of CEECS, Intereconomics, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 19-28, January/February.
Beghin, J.C. and A. Aksoy, 2003: Agricultural Trade and the Doha Round: Lessons from Commodities Studies, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Briefing Paper 03-42, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, July.
Beghin, J.C., D. Roland-Holst and D. van der Mensbrugghe, 2003: How Will Agricultural Trade Reforms in High Income Countries Effect the Trading Relationship of Developing Countries? in OECD (2003a), pp. 39-58.
Brooks, J., A. Matthews and N. Wilson, 2004: Do Developing Countries Need A Development Box? OECD, Paris (mimeo).
Diakosavvas, D., 2001: The Uruguay Round Agreement in Practice: How Open Are the OECD Markets? Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, OECD, Paris.
Elbehri, A. and S. Leetma, 2002: How Significant are Export Subsidies to Agricultural Trade? paper presented at the Fifth Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Taipei, Taiwan, 5 June.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), 2002: Agriculture, Trade and Food Security, Vol. II: Country Case Studies, FAO, Rome.
Francois, J., H. van Meijl and F. van Tongeren, 2003: French Agriculture and Processed Foods in the Doha Round, Groupe d'Economie Mondiale de Sciences PO, Paris, July.
Gibson, P., J. Wainio, D. Whitley and M. Bohman, 2001: Profiles of Tariffs in Global Agricultural Markets, Agricultural Economic Report No. 796, The United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Hertel, T., 1997: Global Trade Analysis: Modeling and Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York.
Hertel, T. and W. Martin, 2000: Liberalizing Agriculture and Manufactures in a Millennium Round: Implications for the Developing Economies, The World Economy, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 455-470.
Hertel, T., K. Anderson, J. Francois and W. Martin, 2000: Agricultural and Non-Agricultural Liberalization in the Millennium Round, The Center for International Economic Studies, Discussion Paper No. 0016, University of Adelaide, Australia.
Ingco, M.D. and J.D. Nash, 2004: What's at Stake? Developing Country Interest in the Doha Development Round, in Ingco and Nash (eds.), op. cit., pp. 1―23.
Ingco, M.D. and J.D. Nash (eds.), 2004: Agriculture and the WTO, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Jayasurya, S. and P.J. Lloyd (eds.), 2004: International Trade and Development, Edward Elgar Publishers, London.
Lindland, J., 1997: The Impact of the Uruguay Round on Tariff Escalation in Agricultural Products, FAO, Rome.
Mathews, A., 2002: Developing Country Experiences with the Implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreernent on Agriculture, paper presented at the Food and Agriculture Organization Symposium "Implementing the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture", Geneva, Switzerland, 2 October.
Idem, 2004: Agriculture after Cancún, Trinity Economic Paper No. 17, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, 11 March.
McCulloch, N., L.A. Winters and X. Cirera, 2001: Trade, Liberalization and Poverty: A Handbook, Center for Economic Policy Research, London.
Messerlin, P.A., 2001: Measuring the Cost of Protection in Europe: European Commercial Policy in the 2000s, Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C.
Idem, 2003: Agriculture in the Doha Round, World Bank Working Paper No. 2003, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), 2002: Agricultural Policies in the OECD Countries: Monitoring and Evaluation, OECD, Paris.
Idem, 2003a: Agricultural Trade and Poverty: Making Policy Analysis Count, OECD, Paris, September.
Idem, 2003b: Farm Household Incomes: Issues and Policy Responses, OECD, Paris, January.
Tangermann, S., 2004: Farming Support: The Truth Behind the Numbers, OECD Observer, 31 March.
Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, 2003: The Cancún WTO Ministerial Meeting: What Happened? What Does it Mean for Development? TCARC Policy Paper; available at: ‹agritrade.cta.int/wto/analysis.htm›.
Timmer, C.P., 1997: Farmers and Markets: The Political Economy of New Paradigms, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 79, No. 2, pp. 621-627.
van der Mensbrugghe, D. and J.C. Beghin, 2004: Global Agricultural Liberalization: An In-Depth Assessment of What Is at Stake, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Working Paper 04-370, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, September.
The World Bank, 2002: Reshaping Global Trade Architecture for Development, in World Bank, Global Economic Prospects, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Idem, 2004: Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Economies, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
WTO (World Trade Organization), 2001: Doha Ministerial Declaration, WTO Doc. WT/MIN(01)/DEC/1, adopted 14 November; available at: ‹docsonline.wto.org›.
Idem, 2003a: International Trade Statistics 2003, WTO, Geneva, Switzerland, August.
Idem, 2003b: Draft Cancun Ministerial Text submitted by General Council Chairperson Carlos Perez del Castillo and Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi, Geneva, Switzerland, 31 August.
Idem, 2003c: Consolidated African Union Position on Agriculture: Communication from Mauritius, Geneva, Switzerland, 31 August.
Idem, 2003d: Draft Cancún Ministerial Text submitted by Ministerial Council Chairman Luis Derbez, Geneva, Switzerland, 13 September.
Idem, 2004a: WTO Agriculture Negotiations: The Issues and Where We Are Now, Geneva, Switzerland, 20 April.
Idem, 2004b: Text of the July package'—the General Council's Post-Cancún decision, 1 August; available at: ‹www.wto.org/English/tratop_e/dda_e/draft_text_gc_dg_31july04_e.htm›.
Idem, 2004c: International Trade Statistics, WTO, Geneva, Switzerland.
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