The Study On Domestic Support Policies Of Agricultural Subsidy Under The WTO Rules

Since sixty years of WTO/GATT multilateral trading system established, trading liberalization have made successful progress in the most fields of the international trade. But only in the agriculture sector remain exists lots of complicated tariffs, quotas, subsidies, other government support and protection measures. High amounts of supports and subsidies in some countries are seriously distorting international agriculture product trade and market price, which bring negative impact in the developing parties'agricultural development. As national agricultural policies usually carry political, economy, social and even cultural objectives, agricultural trade liberalization is still to be a very slow and complex process. Nowadays agriculture is the most sensitive issue in the Doha Round negotiations and multilateral trade system. Agricultural product trade is remains bothered by all kinds of trade restrictions and distortion measures. In 2003 Cancun Ministerial Conference, the parties failed to reach any agreement. In 2006, WTO General-Director Lamy announced the suspension of the Doha Round negotiation. Thus, agricultural trade liberalization did not obtain any progress. Under the Tokyo Round"subsidy code"and the Uruguay Round"Agreement on agriculture"(URAA), agriculture subsidies are divided into market access, export subsidy and domestic support. As our government committed to eliminate all export subsidies clearly in the china accession protocol, domestic support and market accession are only two entry point in the context of our agricultural trade issues. This article does not involve market accession because it entirely depends on negotiation of parties or its power. The domestic support will be the most worthwhile part of study for the issue of domestic support mainly involves domestic policy.This dissertation addresses the regulation of domestic support policy in the agriculture subsidy under current WTO rules and is composed of four parts. The first chapter states the theory of the agriculture subsidy and establishes theoretical basis for probing into the domestic support policy. After defining"agriculture subsidy"and"domestic support", the author analyzes the internal and external motivation of the agriculture subsidy that send into the WTO framework. Otherwise article analyzes the legal system of agriculture subsidy from the perspective of international law and economics. Then article obtains the necessity of agriculture subsidy and existence of its legal system. The second chapter addresses the origins of URAA and its main provisions of domestic support. This part makes a comprehensive review of the agriculture subsidy and domestic support negotiations within the framework of GATT and WTO. URAA raises the issue of domestic support, which was reached in the Uruguay Round negotiation. And then discusses the three forms (Green, Amber, Blue) of"domestic support"to form a preliminary outline of domestic support legal system. In addition, this chapter also focuses on reviewing the process of the Doha Round and its all stages of negotiation. The third chapter is the core of this article, it shows the detailed analysis of"Green box","Amber box","Blue box"under WTO rules and tries to explore controversial issues under each of rules. In particular, this part makes the comparative analysis between the related rule of"Framework Agreement on agriculture negotiation"and URAA. Examples of individual developed countries how to use the sub-boxes to develop theirs agriculture industry, and which finally distort international agricultural trade. In analyzing each rules, the author places china's agriculture domestic support policy under the WTO rule to analyze and find problems in our policy. At the end of this article, the author probes into Chinese agriculture industry current status, issues, and the overall trend of national domestic support policy of major developed countries. And the author put forward to improve agriculture support legal system and establish farmer income support system and make full use of WTO rules to develop our agriculture industry, and establish a rural financial and insurance system, which attempts to provide the development of our agricultural trade with any useful ideas.