Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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Figure 2. 9 Global Imports of Top 5 Products by Origins, %, 2008-2016
Source: ITC Macmap, CEPII BACI, Eurostat RAMON, UN Comtrade, UN Trade Statistics, and authors’ calculations
The new rules and commitments set by the agreement can be summarized as follows:
 market access— conversion of various non-tariff measures to equivalent bound tariffs;
 domestic support— reduction of subsidies and other programmes, including those that
raise or guarantee farmgate prices and farmers’ incomes
 export subsidies— reduction in export subsidies and other methods used to make
exports artificially competitive, through commitments to reduce subsidized export
quantities, and the amount of money spent subsidizing exports.
The Agreement allows governments to support their rural economies, but preferably through
policies that cause less distortion to trade. It also foresees some flexibility in the implementation
of the commitments such as lower levels for developing countries to cut subsidies or lower
tariffs, compared to developed countries, as well as extra time for those obligations. Least-
developed countries are exempt from those cuts. The interests of critical countries in terms of
reliance on imports for food supplies, and the concerns of least-developed economies are dealt
with in special provisions. The most radical decision in agriculture is the abolishment of
agricultural export subsidies, while setting the rules for other forms of farm export support,
known as the Nairobi Decision and taken at the Tenth WTO Ministerial Conference, in 2015
(WTO, 2015).
The agricultural trade policy objectives culminate from the intersection of the trade policy
objectives with those of the agricultural policy and do not exist in a written and concrete form
since they comprise internal conflicts such as the necessity to satisfy both export revenue
increase and sustain domestic food supply or the rising revenue for farmers together with
affordable food prices for consumers.
Global agricultural policy landscape could not be studied without a special glance on the EU’s
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as an example and with the following aims (European
Commission, 2018):
14 14 14 14 14 14 15 16 16
1.8 1.6 1.7 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.7 1.4 1.3 3.6 4.1 4.8 5.2 5.5 5.4 5.8 6.3 7.1
44.4 43.4 41.0 39.4 37.6 38.3 37.9 36.5 36.9
36.2 36.7 38.2 40.1 41.0 40.5 40.0 39.7 38.4
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
NAFTA MERCOSUR ASEAN EU-28 Others