The US-Korea free trade agreement finalized last week caught the US rice industry by surprise. Well, at least that’s what they say. “US-Korea FTA rice exclusion dismays industry” was the title of the press release issued by the USA Rice Federation. Given the significance of this exclusion of a major export commodity from the biggest trade deal in the last decade, it’s gotten little to no coverage. The US wants it that way.
Both the Korean and Malaysian FTA negotiations with the US have been bogged down over the last half year, and one of the key sticking points has been rice – that is, whether these countries would reduce trade barriers currently in place to US rice exports. There are at least several reasons why a country where rice is a staple crop and where a large amount of rice is still produced would cringe at the thought of rice market liberalization. You might not want to put your farmers out of business from cheap, subsidized exports of US rice. You might want to keep up the quality of rice in your domestic markets – many Asian palates find US rice not very tasty. You might want to maintain some control over rice markets to ensure food security for a population highly dependent on rice for food.
This is an argument made by campesinos, Zapatistas, and others in Mexico against the complete opening of their agricultural markets under NAFTA. There, the final barriers are to come down in 2008. Most campesino groups have called for maize and beans to be taken out of NAFTA – these crops are essential to the food security of the country, and viable domestic markets in these food crops are essential to the continued ability of campesinos to make a living producing them. The final NAFTA opening will finish off the slow demise of the Mexican peasant, sending them to the metropolises of Mexico and/or north of the border to work in the fields and the slaughterhouses of the United States.
So the exclusion of rice from the South Korea-US FTA is actually a big deal to those who pay attention to agricultural trade negotiations. It will certainly be paid attention to by the Malaysians, who travel to Washington next month to continue their negotiations with the US government.
Unfortunately, the exclusion of rice from the agreement cost a great deal. The US knows how to twist arms and they know how to pry open markets. To protect its rice farmers, Korea made heavy concessions to open its auto market, including eliminating the “non-tariff barrier” of requirements for the sale of ultra low emissions vehicles – lowering(!) their standards to that of California. To protect their rice industry, Korea eliminated tariffs on HALF of current US farm exports to Korea ($1.6 billion worth), including wheat, corn for feed, and soybeans for crushing, as well as expanded market access for US beef (once we can prove there’s no BSE in our beef) and pork. And according to the US Trade Representative’s fact sheet, “The KORUS FTA contains provisions on pharmaceutical market access that go far beyond what has ever been obtained in other US FTAs.” The US did good for its corporate class.
The final feather in the cap of the US negotiators was the agreement from South Korea to not require US GMOs to undergo safety evaluations in Korea. They’ll just take the US’s word for it that a GMO is safe. This agreement is in clear violation of international law on GMOs under the UN Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. According to newspaper accounts this is the price the Koreans had to pay for concessions from the US on opening their textile market. A high price indeed.
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