Failed talks good, bad for farmers

ST. LOUIS – Agricultural lobbyists didn’t want to give up federal subsidies to see the WTO negotiations succeed. But that doesn’t mean they are happy the talks collapsed Tuesday.

John Hoffman, president of the American Soybean Association, was hoping for a deal that would give the U.S. grain exporters more access to growing markets in China and India.

What U.S. farmers got, instead, was no deal, which means no wider access to those markets. It also means they’ll keep billions of dollars of subsidies that the U.S. said it was willing to trim in order to clinch a deal.

The U.S. had agreed under the deal to limit U.S. farm subsidies deemed to unfairly distort international trade to under $14.5 billion. But the negotiations fell apart when the U.S. resisted attempts by China and India to ensure a loophole for developing countries allowing them to increase farm tariffs as part of an agreement.