Word: farmed
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...successfully challenged our cotton subsidies in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a recent congressional report admitted "all major U.S. program crops are potentially vulnerable to WTO challenges." When U.S. officials urge the world to embrace free markets and free trade, the inevitable response is, What about your farm programs? "Our credibility is zero," says economist Daniel Sumner, a former Assistant Agriculture Secretary who runs the University of California's Agricultural Issues Center. "Every other country thinks of us as a liar and a crook...
...taking a hit in the global economy. In the Doha round of trade negotiations, the U.S. and Europe are supposed to slash farm supports, and the rest of the world is supposed to slash tariffs and other barriers on everything from cars to software to wood to wine to legal and financial services. But for several years, our reluctance to cut farm supports has stalled the talks, kneecapping American firms ranging from Microsoft to FedEx to Anheuser-Busch, and even American farmers who rely on exports. "The problem is a vested political constituency that's absolutely committed to the status...
...thought they had a shot. A similar package had gotten 200 votes in 2002 without such a grand coalition, and this time Democrats--who had spent six years complaining about Republican giveaways to the rich--were calling the shots. Even the Bush Administration supported payment limits. During speeches to farm groups, Johanns kept displaying maps of all the subsidy recipients on Manhattan's swank Park Avenue...
EVEN BEFORE THE Agriculture Committee began work on the farm bill, chairman Peterson took Pelosi to meet with farm groups and warned her that Democratic freshmen in rural districts might lose seats if farm programs were revamped. Reformers countered with polls showing support for strict payment limits in those districts, and an analysis showing that most of those districts would receive more money under Kind-Flake through conservation payments. But as a Pelosi aide told them, it didn't matter whether the danger was real; it only mattered that freshmen Democrats believed it. The aggies flew in hundreds of farmers...
...instead of cutting farm spending--which accounted for less than nutrition spending--Peterson persuaded Pelosi to pry money out of the Ways and Means Committee by closing a loophole that helps foreign firms duck U.S. tax liabilities. Republicans denounced this back-door tax hike to no avail. "They had every right to scream foul," Kind says. "There was no vetting in Ways and Means, no hearings, no markup. My party just grabbed $10 billion to buy off the opposition." Democratic leaders then squelched an amendment that would have forced an up-or-down vote on eliminating subsidies for farmers earning...