Three researchers who presented at the International Sweetener Symposium in San Diego criticized a controversial Heritage Foundation attack on farm policy. The Heritage plan, they said, would seriously injure farmers dealing with depressed prices, natural disasters, and foreign countries’ predatory trade practices.
John Gilliland, a trade attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, discussed a study he published earlier this summer as a rebuttal to Heritage’s “Farms and Free Enterprise: A Blueprint for Agricultural Policy.”
Heritage argued that America should unilaterally eliminate its farm policy and crop insurance system in hopes that other nations would reciprocate and drop their farm subsidies and trade protections, Gilliland said.
“I think this is counterproductive,” he explained. “Unilaterally eliminating our farm policy without first securing commensurate gains from our trading partners would leave U.S. farmers and ranchers vulnerable to high and rising foreign subsidies, tariffs, and non-tariff barriers.”
He pointed to sugar as a prime example of a market grossly distorted by foreign subsidies and noted the irony of Heritage opposing a plan sponsored by Congressman Ted Yoho (R-FL) to eliminate America’s no-cost sugar policy in exchange for other nations ending their subsidies.
“It must be puzzling for U.S. sugar farmers that proponents of free trade would deride a zero-for-zero proposal that targets the complete elimination of domestic subsidies and tariffs,” Gilliland said. “Is this not essentially what the Heritage Foundation would consider as the desirable outcome for all U.S. commodities? Is this not what the United States proposes to do on tariffs in every free trade agreement it negotiates?”
Heritage’s suggested approach to agriculture is unlikely to gain much traction in Congress, he said, as lawmakers begin debate of the 2018 Farm Bill.
Source: sugaralliance.org