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DCL
Voice of America has a good story on a ridiculous thing, and it's summed up in a quote from the Environmental Working Group's David DeGennaro: "American taxpayers are going to be subsidizing Brazilian cotton farmers just so that we can keep on subsidizing our own cotton farmers. It's really a strange situation."
Basically, Brazil has permission from the WTO to raise its import tariffs on U.S. agricultural products since the U.S. has ignored a WTO order to end its cotton subsidies.
But Brazil doesn't buy enough U.S. agriculture to even out the situation, in their eyes, and—more from VOA:
Brazil wanted to hit the U.S. where it would hurt more: by breaking patents on pharmaceuticals and copyrights on movies and software. The WTO agreed, and gave Brazil the right to $260 million dollars worth of U.S. intellectual property this year....
U.S. officials didn't want that to happen. "Rather than have Brazil retaliate against us, the U.S. has found a way to bribe Brazil, if you will, to not impose that retaliation in exchange for various things the U.S. says it will do."
That last quote is from the International Food Policy Research Institute's David Orden, who is referring to a $147 million fund that the U.S. has agreed to establish to help cotton farmers improve production in Brazil and other countries.
Why? So the U.S. doesn't get shut out of Brazil, a growing market for American exports. It's an unprecedented approach that even industrial agriculture experts are unsure about, and it has the potential to get worse: similar problems could arise with other crops unless the big farm subsidies are not renewed when they come up in Congress in 2012.
Thanks to VOA for the story, which is worth reading in full.
