It would be the largest trade setback for U.S. farmers since the 1980 grain embargo against the Soviet Union. Farmers in Canada, Europe, Australia and Latin America would enjoy greater access to the Chinese market while U.S. farmers would again be forced to sit on the sidelines and watch sales go to competitors. Permanent normal trade relations status and bringing China into the rules-based environment of the WTO are the best ways to assure internal economic and political reforms within China. Trade creates more markets for national products, allowing expansion at home, more jobs, greater investment and more products at lower prices for consumers through imports. Trade makes countries richer.
Rich countries take better care of the environment, workers' rights and human rights.
According to Reuters, Russia's Acting Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said on Wednesday farming was in serious trouble and needed urgent reform, and at the same time opened the long-running and emotive debate on land reform. We need in the nearest future to unite the efforts of scientists and those with practical experience of farming to draw up an economic model of agricultural production which can be applied in our country, and to draw up forms of state support. Most farmland in Russia is no longer state property following privatisation in the mid 1990s. Ownership was then transferred to members of the farms that were being privatised, who received vouchers showing they owned a share in the farm. Russia produced 47.9 million tonnes of grain in 1998 and 54.7 million last year, in both cases less than needed, and has been forced to ask for international food aid to support the population.