[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 9, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H8066]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               CHANGING FARM SUBSIDY AND TARIFF PROGRAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, our good friend and very able U.S. Trade 
Representative, Ambassador Robert Zoellick, about to represent America 
at the WTO trade summit in Cancun this week, should be given a message 
and a mission. The message comes from this Member of Congress, a strong 
supporter of trade liberalization, one of the farm-state Members from 
the Great Plains and Midwest Caucus that together has been a strong and 
crucial force for trade liberalization over the years.
  Mr. Speaker, here is the message with which we should arm Ambassador 
Zoellick on the subject of agricultural trade:
  First, we must harmonize, we must have harmonization. That is to say, 
developing countries must agree to sharp reductions in their tariffs on 
agriculture imports, and developed countries like the European Union 
countries and Japan must cut their higher production subsidies 
proportionally more than the U.S. Large agricultural exporters 
classified as developing countries, like Brazil, also must steeply cut 
their agricultural subsidy.
  Second, we must have an end to the large agricultural export 
subsidies of the European Union; and America can end its small export 
subsidies, which are used occasionally as a shot across the bow of the 
EU.
  Third, we must insist that the European Union dramatically 
restructure its agriculture support programs by a greater delinking of 
subsidy programs from production at the same time as the U.S. 
proportionally makes the same adjustment in our smaller level of 
subsidy.
  Mr. Speaker, the large subsidy and tariff barriers of the European 
Union and Japan, but also the United States, do more damage to the 
economies and domestic food production efforts of the world's 
developing countries than the combination of all the foreign aid 
programs of the developed countries and their NGOs. In the meantime, 
the American taxpayers and the taxpayers and food consumers of European 
Union countries pay a huge cost for the direct and hidden agricultural 
subsidies primarily caused by the EU's common agricultural policy.
  Mr. Speaker, either we have that kind of dramatic change in foreign 
farm subsidy and tariff programs matched proportionally by our own, or 
Ambassador Zoellick should walk away from Cancun until the Europeans 
get the message. Let them squirm with the cost of their cap under an 
enlarged EU. American farmers and our small agribusiness firms will 
accept reform, but they are disgusted with the intransigence of the EU 
and the big and unfair disadvantage they face from the EU over export 
markets.
  Ambassador Zoellick should know we demand a real substantial change 
from the EU, Japan, and other countries. We need to walk away from any 
inadequate or lopsided trade deal that is detrimental to the natural 
competitiveness of our farm sector; or, alternatively, the reliable 
pro-trade farm state block of Members will walk away from any further 
multilateral trade agreements Ambassador Zoellick might bring us.

                          ____________________