Domestic Support In The Doha Round Negotiations On Agriculture

This paper is focusing on the domestic support in the Doha round negotiations onAgriculture. At present, many developed country members maintain a very highdegree of support for agriculture, while most developing country members keep thesupport for agriculture at a rather low level, and some of the developing memberseven maintain negative protection. The existing Amber Box,Green Box and Blue Boxpolicies don't fully consider the actual situation of developing country members andsome policies can't be adopted by developing country members due to the financialconstraints and high cost in implementation. In order to achieve a fair trade, thecurrent Doha round negotiations should eliminate the serious imbalance in terms ofdomestic support between developed and developing members. The utilization ofGreen Box measures must be regulated, the disciplines of the new Blue Box should berestricted, the trade distorting domestic support measures laid down in Amber Boxshould be reduced by big margin, and the aggregate level of domestic support fordeveloped members be capped. Besides, the de minims provision in the Agreement onAgriculture provides the developed country members with legal exemption from thereduction on considerably large amount of trade-distorting measures. It is thereforeproposed to lower the level of de minims for developed country members. In the firstpart, the author recalled the Doha round negotiations process, and pointed out existingsituation and some problems in domestic support of Agreement on Agriculture. Thenthe paper analyzed the key negotiation issues in the Doha round negotiations onAgriculture, such as whether the total AMS of developed country members shall bebound and further reduced, the Amber Box support measures of developed countrymembers shall be eliminated, a comprehensive review of the Green Box supportmeasures shall be carried out and disciplines on the use of these measures shall bestrengthened, and the disciplines of the New Blue Box support measures shall beregulated etc. Finally, the author put out and summarized some suggestion for thenegotiating proposal of China in Doha round negotiations on Agriculture.