The Uruguay Round trade negotiations marked a historic turning point in the reform of agricultural trade. The Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA) replaced nontariff barriers with bound tariffs, curbed export subsidies, and codified domestic agricultural programs. Unfortunately, the URAA bound many of the tariffs that replaced nontariff barriers too high, it legitimized export subsidies, and it left the domestic farm policies of the major industrial countries largely untouched. Fortunately, regional trade institutions have also begun to grapple with agricultural trade liberalization. Agriculture was featured in the Mercosur agreement, in recent agreements between the European Union and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and in the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). Plans for broad supraregional trade structures, such as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), have also dealt with the inclusion of agricultural trade. Meanwhile, in developing and middle-income countries, unilateral agricultural policy reforms have been part of recent economic policy changes. However, in the industrial countries, agricultural policy reform has languished in the face of much domestic opposition. But the reform of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 1992 and the 1996 Farm Bill in the United States seems to have ushered in a new era of relations between government and agricultural groups. The author points out ways that multilateral, regional, and unilateral paths could be coordinated to liberalized agricultural trade. He proposes a set of multilateral talks that would benefit from agricultural reform at all levels and complete the job begun at the Uruguay Round.

High levels of protection and domestic support for farmers in industrial countries significantly affect many developing countries, both directly and through the price-depressing effect of agricultural support policies. High tariffs--in both rich and poor countries--and domestic support may also lower the world price of agricultural products, benefiting net importers. Hoekman, Ng, and Olarreaga assess the impact of reducing tariffs and domestic support in a sample of 119 countries. Least developed countries (LDCs) are disproportionately affected by agricultural support policies. More than 18 percent of LDC exports are subject to domestic support in at least one World Trade Organization (WTO) member, as compared to only 9 percent of their imports. For other developing countries the figures are around 4 percent for both their exports and imports. So, the prevailing pattern of trade suggests the world price-reducing effect of agricultural domestic support policies may induce a welfare loss in LDCs. The authors develop a simple partial equilibrium model of global trade in commodities that benefit from domestic support in at least one WTO member. The simulation results suggest there will be large differences between LDCs and other developing economies in terms of the impact of a 50 percent cut in tariffs as compared to a 50 percent cut in domestic support. Developing countries as a group would suffer a welfare loss from a cut in support, while LDCs would experience a small gain. For both groups of countries, tariff reductions by WTO members--including own liberalization--will have a positive effect on welfare. The results show both the importance of focusing on tariffs as well as subsities, and the need for complementary actions to allow a domestic supply response to occur in developing countries if world prices rise. This paper--a product of Trade, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze the effects of trade-related policies on developing countries.

Developing countries as a group stand to gain very substantially from trade reform in agricultural commodities. Agricultural Trade Liberalization and the Least Developed Countries is the first book to address important questions relating to this subject. The authors are world renowned experts on international trade and development and they address a very important and timely issue.

In the ongoing Doha Development Round of World Trade Organization negotiations, developing countries have had much greater leverage, due at least in part to their large and growing share of world trade. But will the increased influence of developing countries translate into a final agreement that is truly more development-friendly? What would be key ingredients in such a final outcome of the negotiations, and what would the developing countries really get out of it. This two volume set seeks to answer these questions. This volume (Volume 1) is issues-oriented. It takes up some key questions in the negotiations, setting the stage with a historical overview of the Doha Development Agenda to help identify issues of most significance to developing countries, and then explores select issues in greater depth. Volume 2 addresses the question of how a development-friendly outcome to the talks would affect developing countries by quantifying the impact of multilateral trade reform. It presents several different approaches to modeling the effects of the outcome of negotiations, and then investigates why these (and other) modeling efforts produce such divergent results. Aimed at policymakers and stakeholders, this two-volume effort puts into the public domain important analytical work that will improve the chance for a pro-development outcomes of the Doha round negotiations.

Agriculture seems to be a difficult sector to manage for most governments. Developing countries face tough dilemmas in deciding on appropriate price poli eies to stimulate food production and maintain stable, preferably low, prices for poor consumers. Governments in developed countries face similar difficult deci sions. They are called upon to give income guarantees to farmers whose incomes are unstable and relatively low when compared to those in the nonagricultural sector. These guarantees often lead to ever-increasing budgetary outlays and unwanted agricultural surpluses. High prices make new investments and the application of new technologies more attractive than world prices warrant, and a process is set in motion where technological innovation attains amomenturn of its own, in turn requiring price policies that maintain their rates of return. Surpluses are disposed of with subsidies in domestic markets or in the international market. Price competition reduces the market share of other exporters, who may be efficient producers, unless they are willing to engage in subsidy competition. This lowers export earnings and farm incomes or depletes the public resources of developing countries that export competing products. Retaliatory measures have led to frictions and further distortions of world prices. Every so orten the major agricultural exporters - the USA, the EC, Aus tralia, or Canada - accuse one another of unfair intervention. Though they have agreed to discuss agricultural trade liberalization under GATT negotiations, if anything, the expenditure on farm support has continued to increase in both the EC and the USA.

Agricultural protectionism is a basic factor underlying the U.S. trade deficit, Third World debt, and global underemployment. Yet despite the seriousness of the problem and attention given to it by many researchers, little progress has been made in formulating and implementing policies to deal with it. The scholars and experts here assembled present for the first time a quantification and analysis of the impact upon the world economy of reduction or elimination of agricultural protectionism. They question why, give the magnitude of the problem, inferior policies endure despite the weight of evidence that they have failed. The answer they derive is that there is no general understanding of the true cost of the failure, and therefore it is necessary to initiate reform from outside agricultural circles.