The US Farm Bill and the Doha Negotiations: On Parallel Tracks or a Collision Course?

From the mid-1980s through the 1990s, the United States undertook major initiatives in domestic agricultural policy reform and global agricultural trade liberalization. The 1996 Farm Bill moved US farm policy far toward market-orientation. Simultaneously, during the Uruguay Round trade negotiations the United States was a strong advocate for imposing significant disciplines on national agricultural policies that distort the locus of production and pattern of trade into the rules of international trade. However, the 2002 Farm Bill reversed this course, increasing government spending and intervention levels in US farm subsidies, making it difficult for the United States to play a leadership role in the early stages of the Doha Development Round. In the next two years the United States Congress and the Administration will write a new Farm Bill as the Doha Round of WTO trade negotiations concludes. With the Doha Development Round, the United States has another opportunity to use the international negotiations to reform US farm policy to meet the changing needs of American agriculture. The Farm Bill and the trade talks, whether on parallel tracks or on a collision course, will have significant impacts on one another. THE URUGUAY ROUND AGREEMENT ON AGRICULTURE AND US FARM POLICY During the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations in 1996, the United States and the Cairns Group2, under the leadership of Australia, advocated freer and more open international markets for agricultural products