Developing country agriculture and the new trade agenda

A new round of World Trade Organization negotiations on agriculture, services, and perhaps other issues is expected in late 1999. To what extent should those negotiations include"new trade agenda"items aimed at ensuring thatdomestic regulatory policies do not discriminate against foreign suppliers? The authors argue that negotiations about market access should be given priority, as the potential welfare gains from liberalizing access to agricultural (and services) markets are still huge, but new issues should be included too. Including new trade agenda issues would increase the role of market discipline in the allocation of resources in agriculture and would encourage non-agricultural groups with interests in the new issues to take part in the round, counterbalancing forces in favor of agricultural protection. They also argue, however, that rule-making efforts to accommodate the new issues should be de-linked from negotiations about access to agricultural markets, because the issues affect activity in all sectors.