King Cotton in International Trade

Book excerpt: In King Cotton in International Trade Meredith A. Taylor Black provides a comprehensive analysis of the WTO Cotton dispute and its significant jurisprudential and negotiating effect on disciplining and containing the negative effects of highly trade-distorting agricultural subsidies of developed countries. To that end, this work details the historic, economic, and political background leading up to Brazil’s challenge of the US cotton subsidies and the main findings of the five WTO reports that largely upheld that challenge. It explores the impacts of the successful challenge in terms of political and negotiating dynamics involving agriculture subsidies and other trade-related issues in the WTO while examining the effects on domestic agriculture subsidy reforms in the United States and the European Union. Finally, this volume sets forth the possible impacts of the Cotton challenge on the negotiating end-game of the Doha Development Round.