Study Of The Compliance Of U.S.Agricultural Domestic Support From The Perspective Of WTO Rules

The agricultural domestic support policies are based deeply on the agricultural protection policies of developed countries.The agricultural domestic support policies will generate the trade distorting effects,which betray the principle of free trade and the theory of comparative advantage.The trade distorting effects are the roots of the international agricultural products trade conflicts.The Agricultural Agreement,which made multilateral rules to constrain each member's agricultural domestic support policies,was worked out through the Uruguay round agricultural negotiations.The Agricultural Agreement has become a significant part of WTO regulations.Although the Doha Development Agenda proposed new reform project for the agricultural domestic support policies in 2001,the negotiations has failed mainly because of the United States' agricultural domestic support issues.The present WTO agricultural regulation framework is still based on the Uruguay round Agricultural Agreement.On the one hand,under the current framework of WTO agricultural rules,the United States use rule defects,make notification without the provisions,or deliberately hide the truth in the domestic support design and policy notification to evade the WTO rules.The United States not only did not reduce the agricultural domestic support,but increased the agricultural domestic subsidies,which has given a big shock to the developing countries.On the other hand,the United States used the present unfair regulations to put pressure on China and other developing countries.Therefore,it is very important to study the reforms and compliance of United States agricultural domestic support and analyze the influences of United States agricultural domestic support on WTO regulation reform.Firstly,we can provide a reference to China agricultural domestic support policy reform by learning more about how to evade the WTO rules.And then,we can get strategy reference to deal with the challenges from the perspective of examining the United States illegal agricultural domestic support.At last,based on these experiences,it can also provide a reference for China to better participate in a new round of agricultural negotiations,and promote the establishment of a more equitable agricultural domestic support rules.The main research contents and conclusions of this thesis are as follows:Firstly,theoretical analysis are as follows?This paper analyzes the mechanism of agricultural domestic support policy distorting trade from the theory of trade distortion.Analysts pointed out that domestic agricultural policies do not directly distort trade,but enhance the competitive advantage of domestic producers and stimulating the production of domestic agricultural products(positive distortion of domestic production),which result in unfair competition between domestic and foreign agricultural producers and the distortion of domestic and international agricultural products trade.So different domestic support measures for agriculture have different trade distorting effects.Then based on the theory of free trade,the paper discusses the logic of why multilateral rules should regulate the domestic support of agriculture and expounds the theory and method of how to regulate the domestic support of agriculture by WTO.And the purpose is to restrict the agricultural domestic support policy which has the potential to distort trade.The third chapter,based on the WTO regulation of agricultural domestic support,build the analytical framework of the WTO agricultural domestic support compliance evaluation and the method.Secondly,this thesis deeply analyses the main agricultural domestic support policies in the United States.this thesis begins with the United States original farm bill over the years and sorts out the reform history of the agricultural domestic support policy since the Agriculture Agreement of the Uruguay round came into effect.It analyzes the complex operating mechanism of United States agricultural domestic support measures based on the main agricultural products and summarizes the features of United States agricultural domestic support policy adjustments under the framework of WTO regulations.The evolution of United States agricultural support policies was a reform which ranged from the instrument of price support to the instrument of direct subsidy policy;it also ranged from coupling direct subsidy to the decoupling,semi-decoupling direct subsidy.The agricultural insurance has gradually become the main policy instrument.The adjustment has presented the characteristics that the choice of policy tools tend to diversify,the policy instruments tend to be market-oriented,policy optimization and the subsidy tends to be semi-decoupling.The reform helped to better adapt to the changes and stimulate the United States rising agricultural competitiveness and the sustainable development.Although it is not really decoupling from the specific products,actually,the measures of decoupling,semi-decoupling is the strategy,which is used to evade the WTO regulations on policy design.Thirdly,based on the current WTO agricultural domestic support rules,this thesis uses the theory and method of ‘boxed' and the AMS measurement model,and constructs the analytical framework to evaluate the domestic support compliance of Agriculture.The compliance of agricultural domestic support from 1995 to 2013,which has been notified to the WTO from the United States,was examined from observation data,bulletin analysis,and the TAMS calculation after the correction of the irregular notification.The violation of the domestic support of American agriculture and the strategy of avoiding the WTO constraint were analyzed.The United States agricultural domestic support has increased 2.4 times in total and makes up more than 35% of total agricultural output value,and green box support increases and yellow box support shows a downward trend.Although the reported data showed that current annual Total AMS(TAMS)that the United States inform WTO from 1995-2013 did not exceed the annual limit of the TAMS on Agriculture Agreement,there are irregularities in the domestic support notification submitted by the United States.The production flexibility contract payment notification box(PFCP)and fixed direct subsidy(FDP)do not fully comply with the green standards and conditions.Counter cyclical subsidies(CCP)are not fully decoupled from specific product production in accordance with the ‘product specific support',Crop insurance premium subsidies to the boxed and the amount errors.If in strict accordance with the agricultural agreement box rules and TAMS measurement method,TAMS was recalculated with the revised measures and amount of the irregular notification.The total amount of yellow box support(TAMS)in the United States in 1998,1999,2000,2004 and 2005 has exceeded the annual limit of the Agricultural Agreement.After 2005,although the actual TAMS than rules limit the agricultural agreement is unlikely,but because of "peace" clause in the agriculture agreement terminated in 2004,no "peace" clause to protect the agriculture agreement,under the condition of specific agricultural products such as the United States to the cotton support a high level of yellow box,is likely to be in violation of the subsidies and countervailing agreement.After 2008,the U.S.avoid the yellow box constraints mainly by providing subsidies to agricultural insurance and reinsurance support.Due to the agricultural agreement "peace clause" in 2004 is terminated,no "peace" clause to protect the agriculture agreement,under the condition of specific agricultural products such as the United States to the cotton support a high level of yellow box,is likely to be in violation of the subsidies and countervailing agreement.Fourthly,according to the new round of agricultural domestic support reduction scheme in the Doha round Agriculture Concession Draft(Fourth Edition),based on the historical data of domestic support in 2001-2013 and domestic support forecast data for the 2014 farm bill,this paper simulates the compliance of the domestic support of American agriculture under the new round of domestic support reduction programs,and then to determine the impact of U.S.domestic agricultural support policy on the new round of agricultural negotiations and the reform of domestic support rules of WTO.The simulation results show that,if implementing the new round of agricultural domestic support reduction in accordance with the Agriculture Pattern Draft(fourth draft),agricultural domestic support policy in the United States in 2002 and 2008 Agricultural Farm Bill Act is unable to satisfy the requirements of reduction.Although the 2014 farm bill made adjustments to domestic support policies,it is difficult to meet the requirements of the cut.It is because of the lack of flexibility in domestic support of reducing trade distorting,the U.S.government is difficult to accept the Draft Amendment of Agriculture Pattern(fourth version),even if members in the development in the field of market access made major concessions in the field of market access.Therefore,under the premise of adhering to the ‘development' round,it is a pragmatic choice to reduce the level of ‘ambition' of negotiations to promote a of Doha agricultural negotiations.Finally,this thesis puts forward the significance of the domestic agricultural support policy adjustment and its compliance to China from the experience of domestic support policy reform of American agriculture to avoid the WTO rule constraint,response to the challenge of the United States' accusation on China's agricultural subsidies and the promotion of a new round of agricultural negotiations.The possible innovations of this thesis are as follows: Firstly,the concept of agricultural domestic support compliance under the framework of WTO rules is put forward,and the general framework for the analysis of agricultural domestic support compliance from the perspective of WTO rules is constructed.Secondly,the logic and context of the evolution of the domestic support policy of agricultural products in the United States since the Uruguay round came into effect are sorted out from the perspective of historical evolution,the combination of specific policy analysis and specific historical conditions.And this thesis analyzes the complex operation mechanism of the main agricultural product support measures and the combination of different measures from the American agricultural bill.Thirdly,on the basis of the existing WTO agricultural country support rules,the compliance of domestic support for agriculture in 1995-2013 was tested from three level: observation data,bulletin analysis,the TAMS calculation after the correction of the irregular notification.It finds irregularities of the United States domestic support for agriculture and the strategy that the Unites States used agricultural insurance subsidies to circumvent the WTO constraint.Finally,according to the new round of agricultural domestic support reduction scheme in the Doha round agriculture concession draft(Fourth Edition),based on the historical data of domestic support in 2001-2013 and domestic support forecast data for the 2014 farm bill,this paper simulates the compliance of the domestic support of American agriculture under the new round of domestic support reduction programs,and quantitatively analyzes the concession space of the United States in the new round of agricultural negotiations.