American-European Agricultural Subsidy Policies And Its Impact On The Doha Round

The Agricultural trade policies of every country are bound and limited by the multilateral trade regulations under the multilateral trade system. Therefore, every country tries to make an active use of their rights to participate in the amending of international trade regulations to protect and achieve their own interests in the multilateral trade negotiations. The Doha Round of Trade Talks is established at the WTO's Fourth Ministerial Conference, and is the first round of multilateral trade negotiation since the founding of WTO. It includes 8 areas of negotiation, namely, Agricultural Trade, Non-Agricultural Products Market Access (NAMA), Service Trade, Intellectual Property Rights, and so on. Among them, agricultural trade negotiation is the most important part, whose progress is closely related to all the other fields. At the same time, agricultural problem is the most sensitive topic, which sees the vastest/greatest differences between the countries.America and the European Union have long practised large amount of subsidiary to agriculture according to their own agricultural policies. While due to different competitiveness of agriculture, they have different claims in the Doha Round of Trade Talks. In order to expand its export of farm produce, America proposes strongly that every country should lower their customs, however, the European Union asks America to decrease its subsidiary to agriculture. Both America and the European Union refuse to make a concession, which makes the Doha Round of Trade Talks have undergone ups and downs, even to a standstill at some time. Doha Round ended in failure. And the main cause lies in that America and European Union refused to make substantial concessions in agricultural subsidy policies. Thus they should assume larger responsibility for the failure of the Doha Round.