Jewish World Review May 19, 2002 / 8 Sivan, 5762
Debra J. Saunders
Euros could don white hats
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
THINGS ARE bad when the American people's last
best hope of returning sanity to domestic government
spending is, gulp, the World Trade Organization.
Led by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle,
Congress passed a pork-laden monster farm bill that
increased the federal ag budget by $83 billion over 10
years. (Its latest estimated price tag is $190 million.)
So much for Daschle's pose as an opponent of deficit
spending.
On Monday, President Bush signed the beast. I'm
guessing that by then Bush didn't want to sign it, but
he had painted himself into a corner when he let it be
known months ago that he'd sign whatever Congress
presented to him. Bush should have instead warned
spend-happy Capitol Hill pols that he would veto a bill
top-heavy with welfare for agribusiness.
Dubya didn't, and now he's paying for that mistake.
No, worse, we're paying -- and paying and paying --
for it.
Enter the European Union. For years, American
ambassadors have lectured the Euros on free trade
and the benefits that would accrue when European
nations stopped propping up their agribusiness with
government subsidies.
It will be difficult for the Bushies to maintain that
story-line after jacking up the U.S. ag budget by
nearly 80 percent. Or as the Cato Institute's Brink
Lindsey put it, "Our capacity to encourage countries
around the world to take necessary pro-market steps
has been blasted away by subservience to parochial
interests." Especially when the EU is acutely aware
that the Bush administration started giving large in
the farm department in order to woo farm-state
voters.
The good news is that the EU, Australia, New
Zealand and Brazil can sue the United States if
farm-bill-boosted ag subsidies exceed the WTO
annual cap on U. S. subsidies ($19.1 billion).
Farm-bill boosters say that won't happen; a trigger
provision in the bill would allow the U.S. agriculture
secretary to adjust subsidies if the $19 billion cap is
approached. USDA spokesman Kevin Herglotz noted
that a University of Missouri farm report predicted
that there is an 81 percent chance that the United
States won't breach the WTO cap -- based on 2001
data.
But as Cato's Lindsey and one WTO country
Embassy Row analyst observed, the "trigger" clause
sounds easy, but would be very hard to manage.
With all those heaps of promised subsidies based on
complex calculations, it would be no easy feat to see
the breaking point, and having seen it, stop it.
If world prices drop, or if production of certain crops
increases, some analysts see a real possibility that
the United States will reach or breach the $19.1
billion mark. Once it's known that the U.S. crept over
the limit, WTO countries could sue Uncle Sam.
The question then becomes: Will the countries go
through the WTO protest process, or not? Aggrieved
countries might find it is in their best interest to
privately negotiate a deal with the United States. And
it probably would be quicker.
The situation must be dire when this columnist -- so
disdainful of the ill- conceived Kyoto global warming
pact and of EU pronouncements on the death penalty
in America -- must, on bended knee, appeal to the
European sense of justice.
Please, pretty please, s'il vous plait, bitte, lodge a
protest suit with the WTO. Look at it this way: It will
give you free rein to dismiss Bush as a cowboy
again.
Here in the land of the free, some free-traders argue
that Bush was right to sign the farm bill because it is
expected to help him win Trade Promotion Authority
-- which would make it easier for the executive
branch to negotiate trade compacts on the fast track
-- from Congress. They say that only purists resent
that Bush signed the farm bill.
They can sneer. Free trade with other countries is a
good thing, but if it comes at the expense of a free
market within the United States, who cares?
Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here.
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© 2000, Creators Syndicate
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