Tesi Arvind Panagariya, docente Economia e economia
politica indiana, univ. di Columbia (NY) (in vista di incontro WTO a Hong
Kong):
accordo Doha Round (WTO) possibile perché vantaggioso per
tutti, diversamente da Uruguay Round, dove trattandosi di diritti
della proprietà intellettuale c’era chi guadagnava e chi perdeva.
Le cifre sui sussidi agricoli distorsivi del commercio
int’le sarebbero esagerate:
non $1 MD al giorno o $280 MD/anno, come dicono NYT e
Wolfowitz (P Banca Mondiale), ma meno di $100 MD/anno, di cui solo 3-5 MD di
sussidi all’esport e 44 MD$ di sussidi alla produzione UE, 21 MD$ USA, meno di
15 MD$ per il JAP +CAN, CH, NORV (dati tra 1998 e 2001). Con la riforma della
PAC la UE ha ridotto i sussidi alla produzione.
Il resto della distorsione è dovuto non a sussidi sulla
produzione o all’export, ma a barriere all’entrata (tariffarie e non).
Le tariffe medie (ponderate) sull’import agricolo sono
(2001): 36% per JAP, 12% per UE, 3% per UE, ma 94% per Sud Corea, 44% per
India, 39% Cina, 30% Pakistan; anche Gruppo Cairns (esportatori agricoli) ha
tariffe rilevanti (13% BRA e ARG, 11% MAL, TAIL e INDON).
USA, che hanno “vantaggio competitivo” in
agricoltura, chiedono reciprocità nelle riduzioni tariffarie all’interno del
settore agricolo;
UE, che non ha vantaggio competitivo in agricoltura,
chiede reciprocità intersettoriale (che PVS riducano tariffe sui prodotti
industriali).
Anche i PVS hanno da guadagnare ad una riduzione delle tariffe
sui prodotti industriali, specie per quelli ad elevata intensità di lavoro.
L’accordo sarebbe quindi fattibile.
By ARVIND PANAGARIYA
November 21, 2005; Page A16
Trade talks at Cancun broke down principally
because the G-20 group of mainly larger developing countries rejected U.S. and
EU offers on reducing their agricultural protection. Two years later, as the
Hong Kong Ministerial approaches, agriculture remains the make-or-break issue
in the Doha negotiations. But the impasse can be broken once we clear up the
misinformation on (a) the magnitude of EU and U.S. subsidies and (b) the level
of protection through trade barriers in developed and developing countries in
agriculture.
The New York Times has editorialized
that the "developed world funnels nearly $1 billion a day in
subsidies," which "encourages overproduction" and drives down
prices. The World Bank’s president, Paul Wolfowitz, similarly
referred to developed countries expending "$280 billion on support to
agricultural producers" in an op-ed in the Financial Times. Oxfam
routinely accuses rich countries of giving more than $300 billion annually in
subsidies to agribusiness. Astonishingly, these estimates bear virtually no
relationship to the subsidies actually at the heart of the Doha negotiations.
Instead, they have their origins in the altogether different measure called
the Producer Support Estimate (PSE), published by the OECD. The PSE
includes all measures that raise the producer price above the world price,
including border measures such as tariffs and quotas. All economists would
find the identification of such a measure with subsidies unacceptable.
To measure the true magnitude of subsidies
that drive down world prices, we need consider only those subsidies contingent
on exports or output. This done, the extent of subsidies turns out to be
considerably smaller than $1 billion per day. Thus, rich country export
subsidies that have been so much in news have considerably declined in
importance in recent years: They currently amount to less than $5 billion, at
times as little as $3 billion, annually. Subsidies contingent on output
are larger; but they, too, are much smaller than commonly believed:
Under the commitments made in the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture, WTO
members have achieved substantial reductions in these subsidies. The EU has
made a special effort to decouple its domestic subsidies from output as a part
of the reform of its Common Agricultural Policy.
Based on the latest data available from the
WTO, domestic output subsidies amounted to $44 billion in 2000 in the EU,
$21 billion in 2001 in the U.S. and less than $15 billion in 1998 in Japan,
Switzerland, Norway and Canada combined. Recognizing that there have been
no major cases of backsliding and the EU has made further progress in
decoupling its subsidies from output, we can conclude that rich country
domestic subsidies that encourage production and lower world prices are substantially
below $100 billion.
By focusing exclusively on subsidies, the
media has distracted attention from the critical fact that the most
important obstacle to agricultural trade comes from border barriers,
also called market access measures. And since developing countries are not big
offenders on the subsidy front, this focus has promoted the false impression
that the agricultural trade barriers are also an exclusively rich country
problem. In reality, when it comes to border barriers, developing countries
more than match developed countries.
Among the latter, Japan and Europe exhibit
high protection while U.S. barriers are relatively low. Thus, in 2001, the
trade-weighted average tariff was 36% in Japan, 29% in the European Free Trade
Area, 12% in the EU and 3% in the U.S. Of course, these averages mask
considerable variation in protection across commodities. Among developing
countries, the relatively more protected countries include South Korea with
a trade-weighted average tariff of 94% in 2001, India with an average tariff of
44%, China with 39% and Pakistan with 30%. Interestingly, protection even
in the developing country members of the Cairns Group, which contains
countries with the greatest comparative advantage in agriculture, is not low: In
2001, the average tariff was 13% in Argentina and Brazil, and 11% in Malaysia,
Thailand and Indonesia.
Once we recognize that export subsidies are
minuscule and trade-distorting domestic subsidies much smaller than commonly
believed, a successful Doha bargain seems within reach. The elimination of
export subsidies and substantial cuts in domestic subsidies do not appear
heroic. But if these concessions are to be made the EU and the U.S., they will
have to be complemented by reciprocal concessions by others.
The U.S. has a comparative advantage in
agriculture, so insists on within-sector reciprocity in the form of market
access in return for its concessions on subsidies.
The EU and larger developing countries including the Cairns Group, who have
high agricultural tariffs, are in a position to offer this reciprocity. But the
EU lacks comparative advantage in agriculture. Therefore, it will only be
giving concessions in this sector and needs cross-sector reciprocity.
Here again the larger developing countries have a crucial role to play. Industrial
tariffs remain high in the Cairns Group developing countries as well as in
India, China and Pakistan. They can offer the EU the necessary reciprocity.
After all, the Cairns Group in particular
will clearly derive large benefits from the rich country reductions in
subsidies and tariffs in agriculture and can therefore offer reciprocal
concessions in industrial goods and services. Other larger developing countries
such as India, China, Pakistan, Indonesia, Korea and Thailand also stand to
benefit from increased access to each other’s and other developing countries’
markets in industrial goods. In addition, they can expect to benefit
from the removal of industrial-tariff peaks in the developed countries that
apply with potency to labor-intensive products such as apparel and footwear.
Thus, once we cut through the confusion
created by constant references to inflated estimates of agricultural subsidies
and consider the accurate picture, outlines of a successful negotiation do
emerge. Those who consider the barriers to a deal insurmountable need to be
reminded that unlike the Uruguay Round, which dealt with win-lose bargains
such as those on intellectual-property protection, this round is focused on
trade liberalization that largely offers win-win bargains. Both developed
and developing countries stand to reap large benefits from the removal of their
own subsidies and protection.
Mr. Panagariya is professor of economics and
Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia. This is adapted
from an essay in a forthcoming special issue of Foreign Affairs.