Gaymard is no less parsimonious with the full truth elsewhere in his
counterattack.
He claims that the EU provides tariff-free and quota-free access to
farm products from the world's 49 Highly Indebted Poor Countries
(HIPCs). This is partly untrue and partly misleading. Important
commodities - such as sugar, rice and bananas - are virtually excluded
by long phase-in periods.
Non-tariff and non-quota barriers abound. Macedonian lamb is regularly
barred on sanitary grounds, for instance. Health, sanitary,
standards-related and quality regulations render a lot of the supposed
access theoretical.
Still, it is true that the EU's larger economies are more open to
international trade than the United States. Gaymard flaunted a telling
statistic: the EU absorbs well over two fifths of Brazil's farm
exports. The USA - in geographical proximity to Brazil and a
self-described ardent champion of free trade - takes in less than 15
percent.
The problem with farming in the developing world is its concentration
on cash crops, whose prices are volatile. This subverts traditional
agriculture. Gaymard implied that the destitute would do well to
introduce a CAP all their own and thus underwrite a thriving indigenous
sector for internal consumption and more stable export revenues.
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