Subsidy WatchIssue 1, June 2006


  • Rara Piscis: Will Fish Really Fly at the WTO?

    By David K. Schorr*

    The World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations aimed at eliminating subsidies that drive overfishing are a rare species within the Doha Round of global trade talks. Although discussed side by side with core trade issues such as "antidumping", the topic is recognized as something new and different.

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Also in this issue:

Studies

  • US-based Environmental Working Group releases new study

    The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has revealed some $1.5 Billion in agricultural subsidies tucked away in a congressional emergency relief bill. The subsidies' supporters say they are designed to help farmers cope with rising fuel costs. But according to the EWG, "the majority of America's farmers, ranchers and rural residents will be excluded from the new subsidy, as the aid is funneled yet again to recipients of annual crop subsidies, who already collected a record $23 billion in 2005."

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  • What Can the Poor Expect from Trade Liberalization?

    The primary tools for determining the impact trade liberalization will have on poverty are multi-country Computable General Equilibrium Models (CGEM). However, the models that have been derived from this method have come to some very different results. In recent years these results have also been revised downwards, predicting more moderate gains from trade liberalization. Antoine Boukt, Sr.

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  • France releases data on Single Farm Payments

    The Paris-based Groupe d'Economie Mondiale (GEM) at Sciences Po reports that France has begun releasing comprehensive data on farm subsidies, including Single Farm Payments (SFPs), following formal requests from GEM and others to the French government. Patrick Messerlin and Pierre Boulanger of the GEM call the developments "remarkable", noting that such a move "was almost inconceivable a few short months ago." Indeed, as these researchers point out, until recently Scotland was the only country in the European Union to release data on SFPs.

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  • Dean Baker attacks the "Conservative Nanny State"

    Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, takes aim at the "myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention" in his new book The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. Bill Gates, doctors and corporate agricultural producers all receive a hit.

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Events