The Impacts of U.S. Cotton Programs on the World Market: An Analysis of Brazilian and African WTO Petitions

Brazil, supported by Australia challenged U.S. cotton programs at the September 2003 meeting of the WTO settlement Body. Brazil complained that U.S. cotton subsidies such as marketing loans, export credits, commodity certificates, direct payments and counter cyclical payments are depressing world prices and are injurious to Brazilian farmers. In addition, the West and Central African Countries (WCA) countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad have filed a petition with the WTO claiming that they are losing export earnings of 1 billion dollar a year as a result of subsidies by the United States and the European Union (BBMC, 2003). For WCA countries, both production and export of cotton have increased in the last decade but export revenues have declined during the same period due to lower prices