Revisiting Domestic Support Negotiations at the WTO: Ensuring a Level Playing Field

Abstract

In the agriculture negotiations, developing members remain concerned about the inherent inequities in the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) which allows developed members to provide huge trade-distorting support without breaching their commitments. As a result of these flexibilities, developed members enjoy artificial competitiveness in international trade, which subsequently leads to an adverse impact on farm income and livelihood security for millions of farmers in third world countries. Further, developing members have been increasingly finding it difficult to implement domestic support measures due to the constraining provisions of the AoA. From the developing members' perspective, the elimination of trade-distorting entitlement for developed members along with special and differential treatment for themselves are the key demands in domestic support negotiations. However, some developed members have tried to build a narrative to depict developing members as major providers of trade-distorting support. This study has made a modest attempt to bring out the fallacy of this narrative by highlighting the asymmetries and inequities in trade-distorting entitlement of 8 developed and 12 developing members based on their socio-economic conditions. Results show that per farmer Amber box entitlement for developing members under the AoA is a mere fraction of the entitlement enjoyed by the developed members. This study provides a different dimension to the ongoing agriculture negotiations to make trade rules development-oriented and inclusive for all. More specifically, this study examine the following pertinent questions (1) whether the relevance of AMS entitlement for developed members has declined, and if so, why are developing members still asking for AMS elimination; (2) in case the socio-economic conditions of the developing members are considered, whether the narrative that developing members have the huge policy space under the de minimis limit will stand; (3) if policy space under the de minimis limit has increased, then why are the developing members complaining about the constraining provisions of the AoA; (4) In case the number of farmers is considered, what will be the entitlement of the members under the amber box for achieving a level playing field. The study seeks to explore answers to these intriguing questions by examining and evaluating the policy space under the Amber box for 20 selected members; 8 developed members namely Australia, Canada, European Union (EU), Japan, Russia, Norway, Switzerland and the United States, and 12 developing members namely Bangladesh, Brazil, India, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey in 2020 and 2030.