The Doha Round of the World Trade Organization: Appraising Further Liberalization of Agricultural Markets

Using the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) modeling system, we investigate the multilateral removal of border taxes and farm programs and their distortion of world agricultural markets. We find that agricultural and trade distortions have significant terms-of-trade effects. Terms-of-trade effects caused by trade barriers are much larger than those caused by domestic farm programs. World trade is also significantly impacted. Trade expansion is substantial for most commodities, especially dairy, meats, and vegetable oils. Net agricultural and food exporters, such as Brazil, Australia, and Argentina, emerge with expanded exports, whereas net importing countries with limited distortions before liberalization are penalized by higher world markets prices and reduced imports. The United States gains significant export shares in livestock products and imports more dairy products. Without protection and domestic subsidies, the European Union loses many of its livestock and dairy export markets. The increase in world market prices would offset at least a portion of the subsidies foregone by U.S. producers