Trade and Agriculture
Problems with trade in agricultural biotechnology products (GM foods) starts begins with the more general problems associated with trade in agriculture.
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While the disruptions of the meetings were primarily attributed to labor and environment supporters, the issue of agriculture and trade in GM foods provided another stumbling block leading to the opening of another round of trade negotiations.
The stumbling block is an extension of a historical debate concerning policy differences on global trade in agricultural products. In fact, a short review of the various GATT agreements helps put current conflicting agricultural trade policies in perspective. The General Agreements for Tariffs and Trade (the precursor to the World Trade Organization WTO) provided the institutional cornerstone for creating a global trade regime following the end of the second world war.
GATT came into existence in 1948 and it took close to forty five years, or the completion of the Uruguay Round in 1994 for states to agree to any substantive agreement on trade in agriculture. The agreements were modest, and the proposed new round of trade negotiations to be held under the auspices of the WTO are scheduled to place trade in agriculture at the top of the agenda.
Lack of negotiation success in agriculture trade is easy to explain. Throughout the world, governments traditionally afford their agriculture sector special policy status. They all do it for a variety of reasons. For example, in many states around the world, the stability of the domestic food production and distribution systems serve as a virtual lifeline for the population. States protect the agriculture industry in order to keep their populations fed.
Politically, states with a large agriculture sector, in both percentage of the population working and percentage of GDP attributed to agriculture, must contend with influential farm lobbies. Governments traditionally set agriculture trade barriers to insure the continued stability of domestic market and to provide the domestic market a strategic advantage in technology development.
Current US GM food trade conflicts deal primarily with the European Union (EU). In fact, most EU political analysts point to the fact that since the creation of the Common Market (the first phase of the EU institution building process) the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) has been the dominant issue on the EU agenda, literally driving all EU policy, including trade. In brief, the CAP is a subsidy based policy erected to maintain a strong and vibrant European agriculture market.
United State - EU Trade
Trade between the U.S. and the EU is big business. According to the most recent statistics,
"The EU and the US are the world's most important traders. The EU's share in total world trade (excluding intra-EU trade) amounted to 18.5% in 1998 (19.2% for exports and 17.7% for imports); with the share of the US also amounting to 18.5% (15.9% for exports and 20.7% for imports). Taking only bilateral EU-US trade, it represents more than 7.1% of total world trade. This is equal to the share of US-Canada bilateral trade. Trade between the US and Japan represented 4.2% of total world trade in 1998."
Because of the high stakes involved in transatlantic trade, periodic trade tensions between the U.S. and EU should come as no surprise. In fact, both sides publish annual analyses of the problems and prospects of trade with each other. Agriculture trade between the U.S. and EU represents a small but significant portion of total trade, and because of the special policy position that the agriculture sector holds in both the U.S. and EU, conflicts in agricultural trade traditionally garners media attention.
© 2001. Patricia A. Michaels