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Trade Policy Analysis
Trade Policy Lessons from the U.S. - Dominican Republic Dispute Over a Tax on High Fructose Corn Syr PDF Print E-mail
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Posted by Ross Korves   
Tuesday, 19 October 2004
When trade officials from the governments of the United States and the Dominican Republic finalized a free trade agreement in March of this year and signed the agreement in August, few people would have guessed that it would begin to unravel by the end of September. In late September, the Congress of the Dominican Republic passed a 25 percent tax on soft drinks made with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This was done to protect domestic sugar producers from lower-priced imports and to increase tax revenue to help convince the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to unfreeze a $600 million standby loan. There are several lessons to be learned from this debacle that will be useful as other trade agreements are negotiated in the years ahead.

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Has the Doha “Development” Round Become The Anti-Development Round? PDF Print E-mail
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Posted by Ross Korves   
Tuesday, 12 October 2004
One of the positive features of the current Doha Development Round of trade negotiations under the WTO is that 147 countries are part of the process. This is up from 123 countries in the Uruguay round that was implemented in 1995. The original GATT agreement (General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade) signed in 1947 involved 23 countries. Countries of all sizes and stages of development have seen the value of participating in trade rules as part of the WTO. With such a diverse group of countries, a struggle is occurring over how to define what the negotiations are really about. U.S. farmers and ranchers have a large stake in seeing that barriers to trade are reduced so that developing country economies expand and demand for food from paying customers increases.

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Insights on WTO Trade Negotiations from The Ruling on the Brazilian Cotton Case PDF Print E-mail
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Posted by Ross Korves   
Thursday, 07 October 2004
The Bush Administration has consistently advocated three categories of reforms for agricultural trade in the Doha round of negotiations: export subsidies, trade-distorting domestic supports and market access. U.S. farmers and ranchers have targeted export subsidies and restrictions on market access by other countries, while many other countries have focused on U.S. domestic support to U.S. farmers and ranchers. The recent ruling by a WTO dispute panel on a complaint filed by Brazil against programs for U.S. cotton producers sheds some light on the how farm program payments may be treated in the new agreement.

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Rights and Responsibilities When Trade Policy and Tax Policy Conflict PDF Print E-mail
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Posted by Ross Korves   
Thursday, 30 September 2004
Trade policy is a complicated subject. Tax policy isn’t any easier. When the two get mixed together, they become almost impossible to resolve as Congress has proven over the last two years trying to rewrite tax laws on Foreign Sales Corporations/Extraterritorial Income (FCS/ETI) that the WTO has held are impermissible export subsidies. But the irreconcilable must be reconciled if trade agreements are to mean anything over the long term.

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India Acts to Join the Biotech Club PDF Print E-mail
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Posted by Ross Korves   
Thursday, 23 September 2004
News stories from India in early September reported that the Indian government will have within eight or nine months a new policy promoting rapid approval of biotech crops to increase yields and feed its growing population. Kapil Sibal, federal Science and Technology Minister, told Reuters, “We intend to have a biotech policy as quickly as possible to supply to the farmers pest-resistant and drought-resistant seeds with high nutritional values.” India has had years of trials with biotech crops and in 2002 allowed transgenic cotton to be sold.

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Biotech crops are sprouting up around the globe. The one billion acre milestone for biotech crops planted and harvested has been exceeded. Watch as we meet and pass the two billion mark as well.
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