UN General Assembly
1986

As it is, developing countries particularly face grave economic difficulties from the plague of protectionism in world trade and the complicated and fragile issue of international debt adjustment. The World Bank has estimated that farm subsidies by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1986 will total more than $US 100 billion. This is a policy that, if permitted to continue, will lead to ruin for agriculture-based economies. This, in the main, means the economies of developing countries, which have to make their way at a time when the international economy as a whole is undergoing difficulty, uncertainty and challenge. The Australian Government has been involved in the recent General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) discussions in Uruguay and elsewhere in the cause of fairer and freer trade. We hope that these discussions will continue so that the issues of trade subsidies, and particularly agricultural trade reform, can be dealt with on a basis which is fair and realistic.