On the WTO, obviously we've been very disappointed about not making more progress on that, but I think all of our trade officials, including Secretary Johanns, are saying that they still believe we can get an agreement. Now, that agreement could be six months, they just don't know, but they do consider it more “when” than “if”. That's a bit like our experience with the Uruguay Round, which certainly went into hiatus for a while.
There are some difficult issues here. In the U.S. it's not like we can come up with another proposal that's going to bring this thing back on track. We stated clearly from the start that we have to have significant market access in countries like Japan, and the EU, and in the developing world. When we looked at what was on the table, it just did not provide that.
When some of the developing countries can protect 95% of their sensitive products, or of their agriculture products--not just sensitive products, since they could basically call everything sensitive--that's not market access. Look at some of the EU proposals for beef. They were talking about access to 160,000 tonnes of beef. Well, I think Canada imports more than that. We import over a million tonnes.
So the access they were offering was just not worth paying the price for in terms of what we were willing to offer. We are willing to go however far we need to go on the side of domestic subsidies, as I think they have said. But we have made a very ambitious proposal. Some people try to shoot holes in it, but if you really look at the proposal we made, there are serious reductions in U.S. farm support programs. There is no way we could have the farm support programs in the shape or form they are in now if that proposal were done.
In this case, overall, our interests are really aligned with Canada's. As you said, we have basically the same objectives. We want to get at, first of all, the most egregious practices, the export practices. We want to bring down the domestic subsidies in terms of the trade-distorting subsidies. We want real market access. Obviously we want to be able to maintain our farm safety net for our farmers, in whatever form we each do that.
So I think our interests are very closely aligned. We have to keep trying to move this forward, realizing that we're on the same side rather than undermining the position taken by the other. We have been very supportive of each other. Canada was very supportive of our proposal. This is the only way we're ever going to get....
But as for prospects, no one knows.