Preliminary comments on the Chair's Revised Consolidated Reference Paper on Possible Modalities on Export Competition

[Once more the agricultural negotiators are focusing on detailed quibbles while forgetting the core issue of dumping which, today and even more tomorrow, rests on domestic subsidies benefiting to exported products. In doing so they do not even consider the WTO Appellate Body rulings which have been repeating several times since 2001 that the WTO traditional restricted definition of dumping no longer holds: from now on it is not enough to export at the same price as that prevailing on the domestic market to be dumping free. The best example is cotton but even the C4 does not take advantage of the cotton ruling and of the previous AB rulings to eliminate the bulk of subsidies going to the US, and secondary EU, exported cotton.]