|
WTO Trade Policy Commitments
Database
Mary
Anne Normile
WTO Under the Agreement
on Agriculture, World Trade Organization
(WTO) members agreed to rules governing
the type and level of agricultural policies
they may use. These rules fall under
three areas: domestic support (price
support and producer subsidies), export
subsidies, and market access (tariffs
and tariff-rate quotas). Countries agreed
to limit domestic policies considered
to be trade distorting, reduce their
use of export subsidies, and decrease
tariffs. They also agreed to allow for
a minimal level of imports of some products
through tariff-rate quotas—two-tiered
tariffs with a lower tariff levied on
imports up to a certain quantity.
WTO member countries
are required to report on their compliance
with commitments under the Agreement
on Agriculture. The ERS WTO Trade Policy
Commitments Database assembles WTO member
notifications and displays the information
in a user-friendly format with various
options for viewing and downloading
data. ERS has calculated the U.S. dollar
equivalent of WTO member expenditures
on domestic support and export subsidies,
and aggregated detailed tariff data
by commodity category, facilitating
comparisons of data across member countries.
The data provide a profile of countries’
agricultural support and protection.
Domestic support data
in the ERS database includes annual
levels of support by WTO members, how
the countries provide it, and how they
spend it. In 2002, the European Union
(EU), the United States, and Japan accounted
for 93 percent of all domestic support
outlays reported to the WTO and 94 percent
of the most trade-distorting support.
Export subsidy data
include expenditures on export subsidies
and the quantity of subsidized exports,
by commodity. Since 1995, worldwide
use of export subsidies reported to
the WTO has declined by half, aided
by a strong U.S. dollar and high world
market prices for many agricultural
products in 2000-02, as well as by policy
reforms that reduced the need for export
subsidies. Over the same period, the
EU has been the largest user of export
subsidies, accounting for 90-95 percent
of the total reported by all WTO members.
Tariff protection
data include both bound (the maximum
tariff levels countries can charge)
and applied (lower tariffs that some
countries actually charge on imports)
tariff rates, as well as in- and over-quota
tariffs for products with tariff-rate
quotas. Against a high global average
rate of 63 percent for WTO bound tariffs,
bound tariff levels vary considerably
across regions and among products.
|
Get all Indicators in PDF format