Policies That Distort World Agricultural Trade: Prevalence and Magnitude: A CBO Paper

This paper presents statistics on policies around the world that distort agricultural trade. In broad terms, the statistics indicate that: (1) Policies that distort agricultural trade remain much more pervasive and substantial around the world than policies that distort trade in other goods; (2) High agricultural tariffs are most prevalent in East Asian countrie; (3) The European Union provides the largest amount of the most trade-distorting category of domestic support (so-called amber-box support) as measured by dollar value, with the United States a distant second; (4) The European Union is by far the dominant provider of export subsidies .In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, nonpartisan analysis, this paper makes no recommendations. (Originally published by the Congressional Budget Office)