US farmers fear Trump’s WTO assault puts them in crosshairs

Bloomberg

Donald Trump’s attack on the World Trade Organization has US farmers worried that the president’s ‘America first’ foreign policy approach will hamstring efforts to defend their interests.
The US is strangling the ability of the WTO, which oversees the rules for nearly $23 trillion in commerce every year, to resolve disputes among its 164 members. But when the WTO’s appellate body becomes incapacitated later this year, even the US cases, of which there are at least two pending meant to protect American agriculture, would be derailed.
“The entire global trading system and the WTO dispute resolution process have been good for US agriculture,” Ben Conner, the vice president of policy at the Washington-based US Wheat Associates, said in an interview. If the two US claims are appealed, they “could be among the first to get stuck in legal limbo without a functioning appellate body,” he said.
Agriculture has become a contentious political issue given Trump’s strong support in farm states, as global players such as China and the European Union use their huge consumption of American commodities as leverage in trade negotiations. The trade war has led the US Department of Agriculture to predict that farm exports will fall by $3 billion in 2019 and caused the Trump administration to authorize a $12 billion aid package to help farmers affected by the dispute.
‘SLAM DUNKS’
The Trump administration is withholding appointments to the WTO’s appellate body to protest what it says are abuses by the dispute settlement authority. The seven-member panel has been reduced to three, which is the minimum number required to hear an appeal. The panel won’t have sufficient members to consider new rulings after December 10.
The WTO is one of several fronts in Trump’s assault on a global trading system he argues is tilted against American interests. His administration is locked in negotiations with Beijing aimed at extracting concessions to reduce the US’s massive trade deficit with China. He’s also threatened to put tariffs on imports of cars and parts that economists warn would disrupt an international auto industry that
spent decades building global supply chains.
The Geneva-based WTO is expected to issue decisions this year on two US dispute cases that allege Beijing deployed $100 billion worth of illegal farm subsidies and imposed unfair import quotas that
harm US corn, rice and wheat producers.
Both cases are “pretty much slam dunks” for the US, Jennifer Hillman, a former WTO judge who now teaches trade law at Georgetown University, said in an interview.
“We really have to fix the appellate body now,” she said. “Without an appellate body you may lose the ability to collect your winnings because there won’t be a binding way to force other countries to come into compliance.”