Developing countries and the WTO agriculture negotiations

It was widely assumed that the agriculture negotiations in the Doha Round would be where developing countries would make some of the most gains.1 Since the completion of the Uruguay Round, which was the first to squarely address agricultural trade, it has become apparent that the inequities in the agricultural trade system were not adequately addressed by the agreement. [...] By the 1980s, however, the US and the EU found that the cost of protecting their agricultural sectors–primarily in the form of domestic farm supports in the case of the US and export subsidies in the case of the EU, as well as high tariffs on certain products in both cases –was getting out of hand, as one tried to out-compete the other. [...] These were largely negotiated between the US and the EU as part of what is now referred to as the ‘Blair House Accord’, a bilateral agreement between the US and EU in 1992 which was seen to have broken the impasse between these major players and allowed for the completion of the AoA.7 The first exception has to do with the requirements to reduce domestic support. [...] The developing countries felt that the text was heavily biased toward the concerns of the rich countries.21 That the South’s concerns were not incorporated into the draft text was also echoed by several studies of the original draft text which estimated that the vast bulk of the gains from the proposal would accrue to the rich countries.22 It is not surprising that the deadline was missed. [...] Following pressure from the US to leave the group or forfeit the opportunity to engage in bilateral trade talks with the US, five of the G-20 members— Columbia, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica—dropped out of the group in the fall of 2003.35 The G-20, however, expressed its willingness to continue the negotiations despite losing some of its members (it has since gained more members), t