lomiller
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2007
- Messages
- 13,208
Of course the US wouldn't want the UK to be allowed to subsidise UK farmers in the same way that US farmers are. It's a common theme of US trade deals and WTO complaints that whilst the US should be allowed to subsidise - directly or indirectly, subsidy by foreign countries should be forbidden.
The typical US approach is to demand that subsides be handled the exact same way the US does it. IOW assistance to farmers is “bad” unless you do it the exact same way the US does it. Eg the dispute between Canada and the US 2 years ago over dairy products. The US provides large direct subsidies to producers while Canada kept it’s producers viable with it’s supply management system (that included significant allowances for US products) The US demanded the supply management system be dismantled, but kept it’s own system of high subsidies in place.
(In a true free market, it’s unlikely that either the Eastern Canada dairy producers protected by the supply management system or the subsidised US dairy farms would be able to compete with the extremely large cost-optimized farms in Western Canada.)