Update: Farm Bill conference report now available --http://agriculture.senate.gov. The conference report is expected to be considered this week by both the Senate and House before being sent to the White House.
With respect to trade and the Farm Bill, U.S. farm subsidies are usually the topic du jour. But this week the House Ways and Means Committee is making a special effort to highlight other trade-related provisions in the Farm Bill. These provisions are not terribly exceptional, and have been circling the trade world for a while now, but it is interesting to note how House Democrats are marketing them -- as tools that can help not just to alleviate poverty (the standard argument) but to ease the global food crisis and ensuing riots in some parts of the world. Global prices of staple foods have risen more than 40 percent in the past year and world stocks are at their lowest since the early 1980s. Kudos for Ways and Means for seeing the linkages between trade and the food crisis and working with the Ag Committee to add these new trade provisions that specifically target poorer countries.
House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel on the Farm Bill's trade preferences provisions:
The Farm Bill should promote nutrition and enhance food access at home and abroad. You can’t always spread democracy with a rifle and this bill improves on existing measures to address the crisis in Haiti caused by rising food prices and persistent poverty. By extending and strengthening provisions that would soon expire, we can help give a sense of certainty to investors to continue the economic growth and development we have built in the Caribbean region, while creating new opportunities for American workers, farmers and businesses.
This year's Farm Bill includes additional trade preferences for Haiti that relax and expand the HOPE Act's rules for duty-free treatment of Haitian apparel. These rules also create incentives to use U.S. imputs, thereby providing new opportunities for American workers, farmers, and businesses. According to Ways and Means, these additional preferences will help Haitian industry attract new investment and create immediate jobs, and generate income to help workers pay for increased food costs and other necessities.
The Farm Bill also extends the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) for new two years. CBI provides preferences for textiles, apparel, and other goods, and has helped to raise the living standards and strengthened the economies of several Caribbean nations. Current CBI preferences are scheduled to expire on September 30, 2008.
On a related note, NDN recently endorsed the Global Poverty Act, which is designed to help the United States develop a strategy to further the U.S. foreign policy objective of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015.
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