WASHINGTON, D.C. – The mere presence of the CWB in the market will prompt U.S. export subsidy competition, said a senior American official.
“Anywhere we find ourselves up against the Canadian Wheat Board, we will feel compelled to respond in that market with something like the Export Enhancement Program,” said Timothy Galvin, associate administrator of the U.S. agriculture department’s foreign agricultural service.
He said because it is a monopoly state seller, the wheat board “is hardly the kind of competition that meets the standard of free and open marketing and fair competition.”
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Earlier, Galvin and other senior administration officials told a conference of the International Fed-eration of Agricultural Producers that the U.S. will spend as much as it is allowed under world trade rules next year on export subsidies – potentially more than $900 million U.S., or $1.22 billion Cdn.
Competition blamed
He said export subsidies are still needed because the U.S. faces unfair competition from traders like the European Union, Canada and Australia.
“We contend quite strongly that whether it is monopoly boards or export subsidies, neither of those practices are consistent with the notion of free and fair trading practices,” said Galvin.
Officials from the American Farm Bureau reinforced the point by suggesting privately and publicly the campaign against the board will end only when the CWB is dismantled.
Galvin’s comments drew strong and critical comments from delegates to the IFAP conference.
Canadians Gary Wellbrock of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and Jack Wilkinson of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture complained that by targeting board markets, the U.S. will be violating the terms of free trade deals it has signed.
“Does the signing of an agreement mean nothing to the U.S.?” asked Prairie Pools Inc. president Ray Howe later. “He didn’t say it didn’t, but he suggested it didn’t. He suggested they would do whatever is necessary.”
African delegates complained the Americans are anything but fair traders as they dump commodities into Africa cheaper than they can be produced locally.
Americans use power
But the harshest criticism came from Australian Graham Blight, IFAP president.
“I’m disturbed because the American attitude is that nothing much has changed, despite the trade deals,” he said in an interview. “They seem determined that they are going to use their vast resources of capital to subsidize exports. The whole point of the GATT (General Agree-ment on Tariffs and Trade) was to curb that sort of thing.”
Blight said if the Americans do not back off, the world’s food traders will rise up against them, perhaps denying them a coveted free trade deal with the robust econo-mies of the Asia-Pacific region.
