Progress in Agricultural Trade Negotiations

Many special interest groups, including environmentalists and labor unions, were successful in scuttling the 1999 round of trade talks in Seattle. This chapter deals specifically with key agricultural trade roadblocks to future trade talks. Freeing up agricultural trade will require ingenious schemes to deal with those sectors in agriculture that will lose under free trade. Two major players, the United States and the European Union, are once again heavily transferring income to their farm sectors. Farm programs may or may not be consistent with free trade solutions.