PHA-Exchange> US farm bill

[Aviva]

We would be hard-pressed to find a more important, or generally lamentable,
policy
> development than this week's decision by the Bush administration to sign
> the new farm bill. The bill, which will boost subsidies to US farmers by
> as much as 67%, is a sorry jumble of politics, bad economics
> and shoddy strategic thinking.
>
> Even in an election year, such adecison is remarkable
> -- more still when one considers that the chief beneficiaries
> of the bill will not be small family farms (of which there are few
> left), but large scale commercial farms which in many cases already
> receive hefty government subsidies. The timing is also unfortunate --
> the Bush administration has -- rightly or wrongly -- been perceived in
> many world capitals as tending towards unilateralism; which is a
> diplomatic way of saying it doesn't seem to care much about what others
> think of its actions. This bill, coupled with the recent steel
> protectionist measures, will do little to shake that image.
>
> Most worryingly, at precisely the moment when Washington finally seems
> to have recognized the importance of facilitating growth in poor
> countries, it has adopted a law which flies in the face of the most
> basic pro-trade platform -- the contrast between struggling countries
> swallowing painful pro-free trade policy prescriptions while Washington
> gorges an already heavily subsidized farming sector is a stark one.
Officials in countries around the world are already taking the lesson to
heart.
>
> Ted Greiner, PhD