U.S. dumping on world agricultural markets: can trade rules help farmers?
2003
M. Ritchie | S. Murphy | A. B. Lake
Dumping, the practice of selling products at prices far below their production costs, is a serious distortion for developing countries’ markets, because it threatens their food security, rural livelihood, poverty reduction and trade.This happens essentially for two reasons:imports of dumped products can drive developing country farmers out of their businessagricultural producers who sell their commodities to exporters find their global market share undermined by the lower-cost competitionThis report analyses dumping calculations for five commodities grown in the U.S. and sold on the world market from 1990-2001: wheat, corn (maize), soybean, rice and cotton. It points out that this is a moment of crucial importance for agriculture trade policy since WTO members are meeting to review and reform the multilateral trade rules on agriculture. It suggests that the minimum acceptable outcome for the reform of the Agreement on Agriculture is to provide and enforce rules that outlaw dumping in world agricultural markets.This report recommends three immediate steps to address the problem of agriculture dumping:the elimination of visible export subsidies as quickly as possiblea commitment from exporting countries to keep products priced below production cost out of the world marketthe publication of annual full cost of production estimates for OECD countriesNOTE: Updated February 2004 .
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