Brazilian minister threatens court action on US subsidies: report

Source: Agence France-Presse

Brazilian minister threatens court action on US subsidies: report
1 hour, 34 minutes ago



LONDON (AFP) - Brazil is prepared to hit the United States with court action over its farm subsidies following the collapse of world trade talks, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told the Financial Times newspaper.

The Latin American giant would rather not take action against Washington over what it says are illegal subsidies and other trade barriers, Amorim told the British business daily, in an interview published Monday.

However, since Tuesday's collapse of the Doha round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks in Geneva, it was now the only option, he said. "The clock is ticking," Amorim told the FT.

"Our understanding with the US was good throughout and it never came to acrimony. But they are the biggest subsidisers in the world in terms of what affects us, so we will have to see them in court."

In June, a WTO panel upheld a Brazilian complaint that the US breached trade rules over its subsidies for cotton farmers. Brasilia could to seek more than one billion dollars (640 million euros) in retaliatory sanctions.



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Here's the perfect example of how Clinton sold us out with WTO

The needs of Brazil can trump the needs of American business and American workers

if a NAFTA country wins a court action (softwood lumber Canada) the US just ignores it. Sleep easy. The other country always gets screwed. Laws do not apply to the U.S.Empire.

to me.

First explain who you mean by "us." ("Clinton sold us out..."). There is a difference between ordinary people and, say, Chevron or Monsanto. "American business"? What is that? Multinationals with headquarters in Dubai or Singapore? Giant "floating countries" (multinational corporations) who are traitors to the U.S., and have loyalty to no one, but who buy laws here that give them huge subsidies and tax breaks, and who then use their ungodly profits to bust unions in Africa or Colombia?

Clinton didn't sell them out. He was bought and paid for by such corporations. And they loved the WTO until the third world started to get uppity--first with the rise of huge campesino movement and the Seattle '99 protests, then with the protests in Cancun where 20 third world countries, led by Brazil, walked out of the WTO meeting. The reason? As designed, the WTO is a private, secret, undemocratic organization, in which the big multinationals (who control U.S. and other rich nation reps) rule in their own favor, to bust local regulation (labor laws, environmental laws) so they can get richer.

Food sovereignty is one of the few issues on which my views fall somewhere between (or should I say, outside of) left (for the people) and right (for global corporate predators). I oppose multinational food trade, on the whole. Food production should be LOCAL--for many reasons (freshness, food safety, worker safety and rights, local control, local sovereignty, waste of oil for transport, promotion of organically grown--real--food). A country is not secure if its food is grown half way round the world, nor if it's grown within a country by corporations like Monsanto. Food production should be small scale, and locally accountable. Thus, small family farms should be subsidized. It is a major health, sovereignty and national security issue. But giant, unaccountable multinational corporations should not be subsidized.

One of the things that multinationals do--using our laws and subsidies--is to dump Big Ag products on third world country markets, at cheap prices that destroy local farmers and markets. In Jamaica, for instance, U.S. Big Ag dumped very cheap powdered milk on their market, and destroyed the local fresh dairy industry (all small farmers). They lost their farms, their livelihoods, their way of life, and their knowledge (unable to pass it to their children), and they lost the ability to feed their country. This has happened the world over, driving multi-millions of skilled organic farmers off of their farmland and into urban squalor, where they become slave labor in "free trade" jobs like those created on the docks in Jamaica, outside of Jamaican law.

Fair trade practices would protect small local food industries like the Jamaican dairy farmers. And it would forbid giant multinationals from dumping food products on their market, with severe penalties, such as pulling their corporate charters and ostracizing them from the world market.

If by "us" you mean ordinary Americans--workers, the poor, the middle class--busting the multinationals would help us, not hurt us. It would restore the agricultural economy in the midwest, and encourage small, local, food organic production everywhere.

Talk to small and mid-size farmers about the tyranny of Monsanto. The "us and them" statement is not really "us" (the U.S.) vs "them" (Brazil/third world). It is "us" (the people everywhere) vs. "them" (giant multinational corporations), who are oppressing us all.

I don't exactly agree with Brazil on this matter. They want to compete on biofuels, for instance. And though they have a leftist government, it has not been very beneficial to the campesinos, who are constantly having to protest against it, on bad ag policy. But I agree with Brazil on the issue of Big Ag jerking them around.

This is a complex issue, but the general outline of it is Big Bully Corporations (often U.S.-based) vs. small farmers and ordinary people everywhere. It is not the U.S. vs. Brazil, although Big Bully Corporations would very much like you to think that, and to advocate for them. They have propagandized us to think that the interests--rights and welfare--of small farmers, small businesses, family enterprises, small holdings/investments are the same thing as the interests of BIG BULLY CORPORATIONS. They use our laws this way, to make the rich richer and screw everybody else. They have also managed to confuse us on First Amendment rights, which should only extend to individual human beings, not to big corporations (which, by being treated as individual human beings, without having individual responsibility, have amassed vast wealth and power ad infinitum. They never die. They never re-distribute the wealth to heirs. There is never any relief from their amassed--and ever growing--wealth and power).

I wish Brazil was more on board for busting the multinationals--than for competing with them, or attracting them to Brazil. Brazil's president is friends with Hugo Chavez/Venezuela and the other Bolivarian leaders (Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Nicaragua), whose goal is national and regional sovereignty, but they don't see eye to eye on everything. Like many political leftists (I'm talking about real leftists, not our fake Democrats), Brazil's president is more into "jobs" (short term or otherwise) than into sound environmental/ag policy (a conservative value) that creates security and long term well-being. However, they are moving swiftly--and together--toward a South American "Common Market" and (proposed by Brazil) a common defense, to collectively protect regional resources and self-determination.

The specific issue at the WTO right now, re Brazil, is whether or not the WTO can be made to behave democratically and even-handedly, or whether it will continue to be completely dominated by giant first world corporations. If we side with U.S. Big Ag against Brazil, we are ultimately undermining our own interests, because Big Ag is not for us; it for the super-rich. Big Ag and Big Corporate power need to be curtailed, in everyone's interest.

was the goal of China, India and much of the Third World, while western countries wanted concessions from China, India and others on imports and exports.

My understanding is that agriculture in the Third World is heavily impacted by government subsidies given to farmers in the West making it difficult for farmers in Africa, Asia and South America to compete with subsidized agriculture in the developed world. In most Western countries it will be politically difficult to substantially reduce subsidies given to farmers. It will be "interesting" to see if this can be forced through litigation after not being achieved by negotiation.