Agricultural domestic support under the WTO, experience and prospectsBy LarsBrink, DavidOrden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, Publisher's prices: £95, $125. ISBN: 978‐1‐316‐51405‐4
本书系统分析了WTO《农业协定》下各成员的国内农业支持政策，评估了规则执行效果与未来改革方向，适合研究农业贸易与政策的学者阅读。
An important achievement of the Uruguay Round of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was the adoption of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Work by the OECD in the 1980s (National Policies and Agricultural Trade, Paris, 1987) contributed to the formation of an international consensus that domestic subsidies, not just border measures, have major implications for agricultural trade. This resulted in an agreement that was specially tailored to disciplining the use of subsidies in agriculture. Brink and Orden provide a comprehensive economic analysis of agricultural domestic support provided by WTO members in relation to rules and commitments under the AoA. They examine the experience gained under the Agreement and related WTO disciplines, in particular the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM), since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round and evaluate prospects for the future. The book elaborates in a clear manner the complex domestic support rules of the Agriculture Agreement and assesses the policy flexibility these afford to different groups of members. It examines the relationship between the legal provisions of the AoA on support and the economic impacts of the policies that they cover, with particular emphasis on two particularly contentious areas: income support payments and market price support. The authors analyse the changing pattern of domestic agricultural support revealed through WTO members' notifications to 2018, the latest year for which data are available. They assess the role of the WTO Committee on Agriculture in providing transparency on domestic support policies and the limited progress made in negotiating further disciplines. The findings in a number of dispute settlement cases focusing on the measurement of support under the AoA, as well as alleged trade impacts under the SCM, are reviewed and lessons drawn. Finally, the authors focus on the relationship between the support provisions in the AoA and a number of topical policy areas: productivity growth, biosecurity, water management, biodiversity and climate change. They assess the extent to which government support measures to address these issues can be covered within the current provisions under Annex 2 of the AoA (the so-called Green Box) or could be accommodated through modifications. This naturally leads to a final chapter in which the authors offer their conclusions on how the domestic support provisions of the AoA could be strengthened to provide a more effective framework for achieving a fair and market-oriented trading system, while preserving sufficient flexibility for policymakers to achieve important domestic policy objectives for agriculture. The book guides the reader through the complexities of the legal support provisions in the AoA, which can be confusing to the average reader, and analyses their application. The graphics and tables provided are very useful in helping to summarise the use of the provisions. The authors note the weakness of notifications of support by WTO members from an economic perspective, in particular the measurement of market price support (MPS) under the rules specified in the AoA, as well as differences among members in the methods used to measure support and how it is reported, and significant delays in submitting notifications. While the principal focus is on the domestic support disciplines in the AoA, the interface between these and provisions on subsidies under the SCM is also considered. Brink and Orden's detailed analysis shows that the multiple provisions relating to domestic support in the AoA have differing implications for various WTO members, making it difficult to generalise their impact. The reader is left with the distinct impression that few of those who negotiated the Agreement fully understood its implications. While it can be argued that the AoA contributes to transparency on support policies, particularly through regular discussions in the Agriculture Committee, the interpretation of the data provided by members is far from transparent due to differences in treatment and methodologies. This is demonstrated by the need for significant manipulation of the notifications data by the authors in presenting an illuminating comparative analysis of trends in support across countries. That analysis demonstrates that trade-distorting support has fallen globally while Green Box support has risen nominally and as a percentage of the value of agricultural production. In other words, despite substantial increases in the amount of support provided to agriculture by countries such as China and India, the life of the Agreement has witnessed an important shift globally from more to less trade-distorting forms of subsidies for agriculture. Detailed analysis of a number of dispute settlement cases in the book suggests that rulings in a number of these may have contributed to this process by stimulating modifications in support policies. The authors make the important point that economic analysis by the OECD and others makes it clear that the aggregate measurement of support (AMS) that is the primary focus of disciplines in Article 6 the AoA only partially captures the support that is likely to affect international trade. Exemptions provided under Article 6.2 for investment and input subsidies in developing countries and under Article 6.5 for direct payments under production limiting programmes (Blue Box) are unlikely to be entirely neutral in their effects on trade. An interesting innovation by the authors is the use of ‘Producer-Oriented Domestic Support’, defined as the sum of all Article 6 support plus direct payments included in the Green Box, as an indicator for analysing trends in total support with more or less trade-distorting effects. This indicator shows a larger increase in potentially trade-distorting support over time than simply considering Article 6 support. Direct payments and other support exemptions in the Green Box are likely to have trade effects, at least over the long-run. In fact, for payments under environmental programmes this may be desirable. If environmental costs or benefits of agricultural production are not internalised in market prices, production and trade flows may be distorted and payments provided under environmental programmes may help to correct such distortions. This issue comes to the fore in considering payments relating to climate objectives, which are discussed in some depth towards the end of the book. The authors identify the modification of domestic support disciplines to address the provision of public goods and to address externalities and market failures as a key challenge for any future modifications to the AoA. The difference between the AoA's measurement of market price support (MPS) and an economic measure, such as that employed by the OECD in deriving its Producer Support Estimate (PSE), is set out clearly by the authors. The AoA measure uses administered prices, fixed external reference prices and ‘eligible production’ – all of which are subject to differences in interpretation by WTO members. The authors make it clear that the MPS defined in the AoA has serious limitations and can actually be misleading with respect to the economic impact of price support. They demonstrate this through an analysis of the MPS for wheat in India, showing that the percentage MPS for 2008–2018 based on an accurate application of Agreement rules would average roughly 80%, whereas the economic MPS based on OECD data was generally negative. They also demonstrate that the use of a moving average of international reference prices, rather than a fixed reference price and applying this to total production would make the WTO measure more reflective of economic reality. This leads them to propose the adoption of such changes in the way MPS is calculated in any future negotiated revisions to the AoA. A particularly thought-provoking chapter in the book provides an assessment of the extent to which current disciplines facilitate or constrain the use of government payments to address a number of agricultural policy issues relating to the provision of public goods. The authors argue that the flexibility inherent in the current provisions of the AoA, particularly those relating to the Green Box allows considerable policy space for addressing critical issues, although some types of subsidies that qualify under the Green Box could still be actionable under the SCM. However, they identify some weaknesses, particularly with respect to the provisions governing environmental programmes, which may be interpreted to apply to such areas as safeguarding and enhancing biodiversity and climate change mitigation. These provisions limit payments to covering the costs incurred or income foregone in meeting programme requirements. They may make it difficult to provide incentives for participation and pose problems for achieving a supply of environmental goods whose public benefit exceeds their private costs. In addition, the AoA requirement that payments be based on the fulfilment of specific conditions, including conditions related to production methods or inputs, could be difficult to satisfy in programmes that base payments on outcomes rather than effort. There is increasing focus on the design of performance-based programmes among farmers and land owners, as well as environmental economists. The authors argue that greater clarity could be sought in future revisions to Green Box criteria to accommodate measures that address public good issues within the constraint that these should have at most minimal effects on production and trade. Brink and Orden draw up on the results of their analysis of the implementation and effects of the AoA to identify several enhancements in an AoA 2.0 that would improve its economic effectiveness. But they are realistic in recognising that achieving such changes in the current international policy environment is extremely challenging. The fragility of the consensus on the role of the WTO is illustrated by the failure to conclude the Doha Round of negotiations which included detailed proposals for agriculture in 2008 and, more generally, by the fact that the crucial WTO Dispute Settlement mechanism has not been functioning since 2019 because appointments to the Appellate Body have been blocked by the United States. Although there has been some progress on agricultural issues, particularly the use of export subsidies, the adoption of unilateral trade-restrictive measures under the Trump Administration in 2017, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and more recently Russia's war on Ukraine have taken the focus far away from negotiating further changes in WTO provisions relating to agriculture. Even the most fervent supporters of multilateralism would probably be pessimistic about the likelihood of future progress in the WTO in dealing with outstanding agricultural trade issues. But this in no way detracts from the importance of the work by Brink and Orden. The clarity and thoroughness of the analysis in their book make it essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature and scope of WTO disciplines on agricultural support.