Technical trade barriers are increasingly important in the international trade of agricultural products. Designing technical trade measures that can satisfy the growing demand for food safety, product differentiation, environmental amenities, and product information at the lowest cost to the...

The 1996 Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture was a step toward free trade. The Agreement lifts bans and quotas on imports, but allows their conversion into tariff-rate quotas (TRQs), which function like quotas. At present, many of the 1,300 TRQs increased market access to imports, but some...

Nonreciprocal trade preference programs originated in the 1970s under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) as an effort by high-income developed countries to provide tariff concessions for low-income countries. The goal of the programs was to increase export earnings, promote...

Economic change and market dynamics have fundamentally altered the structure and performance of agricultural markets in the United States, Canada, and Mexico within the last 25 years. Many factors have helped shape the current North American food and fiber system, including technological change,...

Market access remains a major impediment for expansion of global trade in high-value foods, particularly processed foods. Countries use tariffs and other measures that effectively stimulate imports of relatively unprocessed agricultural commodities at the expense of processed products. Tariff...

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a free trade area under negotiation among the United States and 33 countries in the Western Hemisphere, will progressively liberalize trade and investment in the region. It is scheduled to become effective by the end of 2005. The FTAA will lead to a...