BRUSSELS : Harvesting a Trade Dispute
One more effort to resolve the knotty agricultural trade dispute between the United States and the 12-nation European Community will be made today when Agriculture Secretary Edward R. Madigan and Carla Anderson Hills, the chief U.S. trade negotiator, meet their EC counterparts in Brussels.
The EC’s refusal to scale back its costly farm subsidies, which help buy export markets for European farmers, brought four years of multinational trade negotiations to a halt last December.
EC Agriculture Commissioner Ray MacSharry, one of the organization’s representatives at today’s meeting, proposed a sweeping reform earlier this month, including subsidy cuts of up to 35%. But agriculture ministers of the EC nations are virtually unanimous in opposing his package.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
