Food Trade Alliance Calls U.S. Agriculture Proposals
"Positive and Necessary Step Forward"

Washington, DC: The Food Trade Alliance, composed of U.S. companies and trade associations from major industries that purchase food and food products, today applauded the efforts of the Bush Administration to give fresh momentum to the Doha round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations with its calls for greater market access abroad coupled with a proposal to cut support for domestic agriculture subsidies and to eliminate export subsidies.

"Just when Doha needed a push forward, the U.S. has provided a needed boost by offering to yield greater access to foreign agriculture markets while reforming a domestic farm subsidy program dating back to the Great Depression," said Clayton Yeutter, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Representative and Senior Advisor to the Food Trade Alliance. "It is now up to our international trading partners to work cooperatively toward removing the unnecessary and outdated trade barriers that drive up food prices, limit consumer choices and hurt farmers and food companies worldwide."

On Monday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Portman offered to terminate farm export subsidies in five years and cut trade-distorting domestic subsidies in the United States by sixty percent as a means of pushing talks forward ahead of a key ministerial meeting in Hong Kong taking place in December. The program also called for significant market-opening steps through reductions in tariffs and increases in tariff rate quotas.

"Under the current global food trade system, American farmers and food processors are denied access to growth markets in other countries because of trade barriers, while American consumers – and consuming industries — must pay prices for food products that are significantly higher than world market prices," said Yeutter. "One of the key barriers to free trade is the category of so-called "sensitive products", which the U.S. proposal rightly seeks to limit. No product should be exempt from liberalization.

"The Doha round of WTO talks represents a unique opportunity to bring an outdated and counterproductive system of trade barriers and market-distorting subsidies to an end. Clearly, additional negotiations will be necessary to move this process forward. The U.S. must do all that it can to provide momentum while a consensus exists in both developed and developing countries that the system needs to be changed," Yeutter concluded.

The Food Trade Alliance is a broad-based coalition of consumer advocates, companies and trade associations from all major industries that purchase food and food products. It advocates for reforms to the global agriculture trade policy system, including improved market access, decreased tariffs on food and agriculture products, and an end to trade-distorting subsidies.

Food Trade Alliance members include Consumers for World Trade, National Retail Federation, National Restaurant Association, Food Marketing Institute, National Council of Chain Restaurants, National Fisheries Institute, Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition and other trade associations and companies representing the food processing, restaurant, retail and other sectors. For additional information, please contact George Felcyn at 202-466-6210 or visit www.foodtrade.org.