The United States’ Influence On Formation And Reform Of The WTO "Blue Box" Rules

The “Blue Box” is a domestic support measure which is prescribed in Article6.5of the Agreement on Agriculture. It provides direct payments to theproducers of agricultural products. Because the “Blue Box” subsidy must beimplemented through government’s public finance and be underproduction-limiting programs, only a few large agricultural countries couldafford. The United States is one of the major rule-makers and beneficiaries ofthe “Blue Box”. As early as GATT period, the United States has established theprototype of present “Blue Box” rules—Deficiency Payments and co-createdwith the EU the rules of the “Blue Box” in the Agreement on Agriculture basedon the Deficiency Payments when the WTO was established. In the Doha Roundwhich launched in2001, the United States could still greatly affect the reformsof the “Blue Box” rules with its strong dominance in world political andeconomic arena.With the Doha Round front lasting longer and two controversial Americanagricultural acts coming on stage in succession, the articles dedicated to thestudy of the WTO agricultural domestic support and the United States’agricultural legislation are becoming more at home and abroad in recent years.However, papers which combine American factors with the “Blue Box” rulesare few. Consequently the paper uses this perspective as the cut-in point toexplore the United States’ strategies to make its domestic agriculturallegislation gradually affect the changes of the WTO “Blue Box” rules.Besides introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter comprehensively interprets one of the outcomes of theUruguay Round—Agreement on Agriculture and present rules of the “BlueBox”. The second chapter analyzes the American dominant influence on theformation of the “Blue Box” rules in the Uruguay Round Negotiations as wellas the United State’s use of the “Blue Box” during the implementation of the Uruguay Round. The third chapter discusses the United States how to use itsinfluence to promote the reform of the “Blue Box” rules from Doha Roundopening up to now, and then deeply analyzes the “Blue Box” discipline of allprevious draft “Modalities”. This chapter also further reveals the domesticfactors which decide the formation of the American proposals in the formationand reforms of the WTO “Blue Box” rules. This chapter also predicts that thefuture focuses of reforming the rules of the “Blue Box” lie in the “Headroom”of the new “Blue Box” subsidies on specific products, technical work of the“Blue Box” rules and the Counter-Cyclical Payments which the United States isplanning to put into the new “Blue Box”. And this chapter also predicts thepossible new rules of these issues. In the last chapter, this paper raises theviewpoint that though currently the future rules of the “Blue Box” which areinfluenced by the United States won’t cause substantial threat to our foodsecurity, if our decision-makers can’t attach great importance to it and takesome appropriate preventive measures before the problems arise, our foodsecurity may fall into passive situation based on thoroughly analyzing someinterconnected factors including the extent how the American agriculturalproducts could benefit from the Counter-Cyclical Payments, the trade structureof Sino-US agricultural trade, China’s grain production capacity and its degreeof market opening. To these, this paper puts forward some feasible suggestionsfrom the perspectives of we china how to participate in the subsequent DohaRound Negotiation (including the negotiations of the “Blue Box” support andmarket access rules) and how to integrate China’s existing agriculturalresources (including food production and circulation two aspects).