Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 4 • Number 17 • 23rd September 2004

WTO Panel Side with Brazil in Cotton, Sugar Cases

Discuss this articleShare your views with other visitors, and read what they have to say

On 8 September, the WTO panel hearing Brazil’s challenge to US subsidies to upland cotton producers issued its final decision in favour of Brazil on all major claims (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 30 April 2004). The panel found that certain US payments to farmers amounted to trade distorting domestic support. The panel further ruled that ‘export credit guarantees’ and ’step 2 marketing payments’ the US offered to its cotton producers were prohibited export subsidies and had to be withdrawn “without delay”. On other aspects of the case, the ruling was mixed. The panel did not, for example, rule in favour of Brazil’s claim that certain US measures had caused it “serious injury”.

On the same date, the panel on Brazil’s case against the EC’s export subsidies for sugar issued its confidential final ruling to the parties to the case. Here as well Brazil largely won the case. This final report confirmed the ruling in favour of Brazil, made in an earlier interim report released on 4 August (see BRIDGES Weekly, 1 September 2004). Commenting on the ruling, EC spokesperson on agriculture Gregor Kreuzhuber indicated that the EC’s new sugar reform proposals (see BRIDGES Trade BioRes, 23 July 2004) would in any event substantially reduce “EU sugar exports and export refunds, abolish intervention, reduce EU production and the internal sugar price”.

For a more detailed description of the cases, see BRIDGES Weekly, 15 September 2004.

ICTSD Reporting; “WTO issues final decision finding EU sugar subsidies exceed quotas,” WTO REPORTER, 9 September 2004; “WTO Rules Against EU Sugar, U.S. Cotton Support, Backing Brazil,” BLOOMBERG, 8 September 2004.