This will be registered as one of the biggest mysteries in the history of trade diplomacy: On Aug. 13, 2003--a month before the WTO Ministerial Conference meeting in Cancún, Mexico--American trade negotiators suddenly decided the U.S. should join the EU's exclusive club of rich countries for perpetual agricultural protectionism. On that date a joint U.S.-EU proposal on agriculture, offered as a means of breaking the deadlock of the WTO Doha Round, was announced with great fanfare.
In a nutshell, the Americans and Europeans were very imprecise in defining their commitment to lowering import barriers and were overly precise in shielding massive subsidies to their own farmers from meaningful reform. Their proposal not only failed to commit to the total elimination of export subsidies, as it should have done, given that these subsidies constitute outright dumping, but it also aimed to introduce provisions allowing them to legally perpetuate a significant part of their worst protectionist practices. …
