What could be more outrageous than the hefty subsidies the U.S. government lavishes on rich American cotton farmers?
How about the hefty subsidies the U.S. government is about to start lavishing on rich Brazilian cotton farmers?
If that sounds implausible or insane, well, welcome to U.S. agricultural policy, where the implausible and the insane are the routine. Our perplexing $147.3 million–a-year handout to Brazilian agribusiness, part of a last-minute deal to head off an arcane trade dispute, barely even qualified as news; on Tuesday, April 6, it was buried in the 11th paragraph of this Reuters story. If you’re perplexed, here’s the short explanation: We’re shoveling our taxpayer dollars to Brazilian farmers to make sure we can keep shoveling our taxpayer dollars to American farmers — which is, after all, the overriding purpose of U.S. agricultural policy. Basically, we’re paying off foreigners to let us maintain our ludicrous status quo.
The U.S. negotiators did agree to modify the complicated export-guarantee program to make it less of an export-subsidy program. They also agreed to ease restrictions on Brazilian beef that have been justified as an effort to protect Americans from foot-and-mouth disease — and criticized as an effort to protect U.S. cattlemen from competition. But the big-ticket item is the settlement’s “technical assistance” fund of $147.3 million, prorated, for Brazilian cotton growers. That just happens to be the precise amount of the retaliation the WTO had approved for the improper cotton subsidies. According to the U.S. press release, the fund will be replenished every year “until passage of the next farm bill or a mutually agreed solution to the cotton dispute is reached.” So the total cost will exceed the price tag of the infamous Alaskan bridge to nowhere, which was at least designed for Alaskans; the annual cost will far exceed the $100 million President Obama ordered his Cabinet to cut from the federal budget last year.
Of course, helping Brazil’s Big Ag — which is just as big as our Big Ag — won’t stop the U.S. from dumping cut-rate cotton into the world market, hurting subsistence cotton growers in Mali and Burkina Faso. But there is at least one piece of good news from the fields: U.S. cotton subsidies have been declining lately, because U.S. cotton farmers want to be independent of government assistance.
Just kidding! U.S. cotton subsidies have been declining lately, but only because the government-subsidized ethanol boom has made government-subsidized corn and government-subsidized soybeans even more lucrative for farmers. The fix is still in when it comes to American agriculture. Congress might “explore modifications” in 2012, but somehow its explorations and modifications always end up shoveling even more cash.
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