Grassley Praises Administration’s Trade Proposal

June 29, 2000

Even as Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky prepared to reveal the Clinton Administration’s agriculture proposal for world trade negotiations, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) praised the administration for making "a very bold proposal."

Grassley said his trade staffer had been in Geneva and reported that the administration will submit a "comprehensive proposal for agricultural reform" to the World Trade Organization on Friday. Glickman and Barshefsky will release the proposal at 3 p.m. today in the Capitol.

The proposal, said Grassley, "appears to put the European Union on the defensive; in fact, the EU at this point doesn’t know how to respond to our comprehensive proposal, and it looks like they won’t submit their own proposal until November."

For its part, the U.S. proposal calls for substantially reducing or eliminating "disparities" in agricultural tariff levels among countries where tariff levels were considered too high after the Uruguay Round; substantially reducing or eliminating all agricultural tariffs; eliminating all agricultural export subsidies and simplifying "the current confusing system of domestic support" for agriculture.

The proposal calls for two categories of domestic agricultural supports: one category would include supports that do not distort trade and would be exempt from change, and a second category would be supports that distort trade and would be subject to reduction.