Abstract
In this chapter, we discuss the fact that for the first 140 years of the United States, exports from this country, primarily to Europe, were dominated by agricultural products. Nonetheless, the US government did not pursue expansion of US agricultural exports as an explicit policy objective until 1930, starting with the creation of the Foreign Agricultural Service, charged with providing specific staff in key US embassies to cover agricultural issues. The current toolbox of US agricultural trade policy consists of trade promotion and export credit programs, working to dismantle sanitary and/or technical barriers to US agricultural products in foreign markets, and systematically negotiating reductions in tariffs on agricultural imports and other trade barriers under free trade agreements.
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Notes
- 1.
The CCC guarantee covers up to 98 percent of the loan principal and a portion of the interest for up to three years.
- 2.
An embargo was maintained on US shipments of locomotives, aircraft, and any other equipment that might be used to support the Communist forces in Vietnam.
- 3.
This amount was reduced to $200 million annually in 1988.
- 4.
A third restriction, monetization, which required cooperators to sell at least 15 percent of their food in local markets to generate resources to conduct programs in-country, was effectively repealed in the 2018 farm bill.
- 5.
There were 102 countries who were GATT signatories at the time of the launch of the Uruguay Round in 1986.
- 6.
The United States also formally declared itself a third party with a vested interest in a given case 153 times since 1995.
- 7.
The Israel-US Free Trade Agreement did not make significant strides in liberalizing Israeli barriers to trade in agricultural products.
- 8.
President Trump invoked his authority under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (P.L. 87-794) in imposing these tariffs.
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Mercier, S.A., Halbrook, S.A. (2020). Policy Spotlight: Agricultural Trade Policy. In: Agricultural Policy of the United States. Palgrave Studies in Agricultural Economics and Food Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36452-6_18
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