More U.S. Cotton Subsidies May Attract Brazil Dispute (POLITICO)

Joe Glauber, senior research fellow in MTID, was quoted in POLITICO in today’s “Morning Agriculture” round-up on agriculture and food policy. Wrote POLITICO’s Helena Bottemiller Evich: “Brazil is likely to file a case against the U.S. should it decide to designate cottonseed as an ‘other oilseed,’ making it eligible for additional farm bill subsidies, said Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and former chief economist at the Agriculture Department. Glauber said the $1 billion a year cost associated with that action — which are based on estimates by economists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — would be categorized in the World Trade Organization’s ‘amber box.’ Subsidies falling into that box are considered to distort trade. This would be a red flag to Brazil, a country that recently settled a years-long dispute over cotton subsidies with the U.S.” Glauber spoke on a panel at the American Enterprise Institute about the Farm Bill.