US Under Stress: Free Trade and Fracture in the National Regime?

Abstract

The previous chapter outlined how the EU regime inherited from the national era was made consonant with the imperatives of the contemporary trade environment but with significant concessions that left its key protective measures intact if not inviolate. This chapter turns our attention across the Atlantic and moves to examine the evolution of the national regime in the US. Out of the three economies in North America, focus on the US is apposite here both because of its market importance (in 2006/07 the USA consumed 9.23mt of sugar, Mexico 4.98mt and Canada 1.43mt) and its political influence (ISO 2008: 15). As outlined in Chapter 4, the type of agricultural support adopted in the US was of crucial significance to the rules adopted within the trading system at large. This remains the case today. Through its position as the biggest agricultural exporter and its material and institutional power in the global trade architecture, the policy vision emanating from the US has had direct consequences for global agricultural trade. Within this vision, sugar has been a notable exception to the general thrust of aggressive market opening. During the Uruguay Round for instance, since the US had lowered its average trade distorting support under the 1990 Farm Bill and because tariffication and minimum market access provisions in sugar had already been set in place, there was no need for adjustment, and certainly no effort made to make this otherwise.