Testimony: On WTO Reform

Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Wyden, and distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before this committee on the current state of agricultural trade and the World Trade Organization. I am currently a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Prior to coming to IFPRI in 2015 I spent over 30 years at the US Department of Agriculture where I served as Deputy Chief Economist from 1992 to 2007 and Chief Economist from 2008 to 2014. In addition, from 2007 to 2008 I served as Special Doha Agricultural Envoy at the office of the U.S. Trade Representative where I was the US chief agricultural negotiator in the Doha talks at the World Trade Organization.

Global agricultural trade has seen tremendous growth since creation of the WTO in 1995 and US agriculture has been a major beneficiary of the rules-based system that the United States and others helped create. The challenges to meet growing global food demand include population and income growth and supply uncertainties complicated by a changing climate, environmental pressures and water scarcity. All of those point to the increasing importance of trade and need for a more, not less, open trading system. A strong WTO is critical to helping meet future food needs.

Read the full testimony here.