Are there domestic compulsions in countries that are imposing such tariffs, and how could a multilateral approach help?
There is no doubt the reason is that there are organized protectionist sectors which have influence in the United States Congress. In some cases, there are also social problems. There are farmers in rich countries who are doing badly and I tried to show this in my opening statement at the UN Economic and Social Council session this year in Geneva. Despite the argument that subsidies exist to benefit the poor farmers, the data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicate that 80 per cent of the subsidies go to the large agricultural companies, not to the poor farmers. This is why in the United States and France these farmers are in a species threatened by extinction; they are fast disappearing. I’ll give you an example: in France, over the last twelve years a third of small farmers have disappeared; they had to quit the business because they could not compete. So if the argument is that they need the subsidies to support the poor farmers, then it’s not working
