Food Security Amendments to the WTO Green Box: A Critical Re-Examination

Abstract

This article deals with one among the many significant issues with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture that brought trade negotiations during the Doha Round to a standstill; and it continuous to remain contentious. The genesis of the conflict lies in a proposal to amend the Agreement to exclude certain policies of price support, given by developing countries to answer their food security goals, from the disciplines of the Agreement. The issue has thrown into sharp relief the overall conflict between development oriented goals and trade liberalization within the WTO legal order. This article posits that the most significant opposition to the amendment pretends to be economic in content, while masking an obviously political nature. In order to unmask this, the article investigates some theoretical foundations of subsidy regulation in WTO law, and particularly attacks the concept of distortion which is frequently used to classify subsidies. This article aims to show that as a theoretical matter, the amendment to Agreement on Agriculture is not perniciously trade-distorting as has been projected, and that developing countries can stake legitimate claim to have such amendment passed. Finally, through such argument, the article aims to place the conflict between two normative ideals, trade liberalization and food security in proper perspective.