WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American government is vowing to continue export subsidies in an aggressive push to buy into more international markets.
Both the Democratic administration and the Republican-controlled Congress want to see aid to exporters continued in the U.S. farm bill, legislation which will lay out American agriculture programs and funding for the next five years.
“I think the export side of subsidies is safe from cuts,” University of Kentucky agricultural economist David Freshwater said after testifying before a U.S. Senate committee studying farm bill proposals. “It is hard to find anyone here who doesn’t feel America should have a market if it wants it.”
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The next day, before a meeting of world farm leaders at an International Federation of Agricultural Producers conference, the senior U.S. agricultural bureaucrat confirmed the point.
“We recognize and will fulfil our commitments to reduced protection under the trade agreements,” said deputy agriculture secretary Richard Rominger. “But we feel that we should implement programs that will support U.S. agriculture in the global market by promoting exports, combating unfair trade and developing new markets.”
To do that, the Clinton administration is proposing to spend $1 billion a year to buy market share.
The key programs will be:
- A revamped Export Enhancement Program that will offer an expanded basket of American food products in a form of auction in world markets. It will be less focused than the EEP has been.
- An expanded system of export credit guarantees that will apply to value-added goods as well as to basic commodities.
- Aggressive aid to emerging markets that will one day become commercial.
- An expanded food aid program that will offer concessionary credit and aid to underdeveloped countries in hopes of establishing long-term trading relationships.
Meanwhile, senior agriculture department foreign agriculture services bureaucrat Tim Galvin told hostile IFAP delegates that the U.S. will act as a watchdog to make sure other countries are meeting trade deal obligations by dismantling barriers and making their markets available to U.S. exports.
The administration is committed to “ensuring that the interests of U.S. agriculture are vigorously defended,” said Galvin.
Later, IFAP delegate Bo Dockered from Sweden said the meeting had been “a lesson in protectionism” from the U.S.
While promoting a creed of “fair and open trading,” officials described a system in which the Americans do not plan to play by the rules it insists others follow.
