Could Putin still stop Russia’s WTO bid?
Here’s another sign that Russia may finally be on the glide path to World Trade Organization membership: senior Russian officials are talking about making big cuts in agriculture subsidies: Russia’s government plans to cut subsidies for livestock and grain farmers in half this decade as part of its bid to join the World Trade Organization, ...
Here's another sign that Russia may finally be on the glide path to World Trade Organization membership: senior Russian officials are talking about making big cuts in agriculture subsidies:
Here’s another sign that Russia may finally be on the glide path to World Trade Organization membership: senior Russian officials are talking about making big cuts in agriculture subsidies:
Russia’s government plans to cut subsidies for livestock and grain farmers in half this decade as part of its bid to join the World Trade Organization, the country’s chief negotiator for membership in the group said.
Aid to agricultural enterprises, slated to reach about $9 billion next year, will be cut to about $4.5 billion a year by 2017 or 2019, Maxim Medvedkov told reporters in Moscow today.
Restrictions on foreign poultry and meat sales in Russia remain the largest hurdle to Russia joining the 153-member WTO, though talks may be concluded this year, Medvedkov said. Russia, the largest economy outside the global trade arbiter, has been seeking to join the group for almost two decades.
This report suggests that talks could be wrapped up as early as April, although that sounds optimistic. Close observers of the process see Russian president Dmitry Medvedev as significantly more supportive of WTO accession than Vladimir Putin, and the prime minister has occasionally made remarks that send trade negotiators scurrying to undo damage. Last month, for example, he suggested that Russia would find a way to protect its domestic auto industry. There’s always a chance that Putin and some of his allies in the Russian bureaucracy could still gum up the process, but it’s getting awfully late in the day.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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