WTO talks run into powerful US cotton lobby

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2005

WASHINGTON (AFP) — More than any other commodity, cotton is interwoven into the fabric of US history, and to this day American farmers of the emblematic white crop exercise an outsize influence.

World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong have been riven by angry complaints from West African cotton producers that their farmers are being left to starve because of heavy US support for its own cotton industry.

The US government is trying to win congressional approval to reform its four-billion-dollar cotton subsidies regime in line with WTO rulings that ruled large parts of the system illegal.

The United States has tried to assuage its critics by offering duty-free access to West African cotton and is stepping up trade and financial assistance to producer...