On October 1st the Washington Post published a leader bemoaning the fact that the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty negotiations had stalled. The Post put this down to “the same old issue, Japanese resistance to US farm exports, that has plagued the two nations’ dealings for decades”

This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Between 1995 and 2012 total US Government rice subsidies amounted to $13.3 billion. Top rice producing States receiving subsidies were:

Arkansas: 5.7 bn
California: 2.6 bn
Louisiana: 2.0bn

Riceland Food industries, Arkansas, alone received $526 million in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2012.

The US puts a high tarriff on the importation of rice, but itself undercuts prices in Japan and Haiti with the help of the taxpayers, and for political reasons. According to the Cato Institute US subsidies reduce world rice prices by 4 – 6%, threatening poor farmers all over the rice-producing world. The US Government spent $700m p.a through 2011 on subsidies, although it has stopped direct payments to farmers. And what are we doing subsidizing Californian rice farmers at all in a state desperate for water?

The point of this is the misleading hypocrisy. The US subsidizes the production of rice and then complains that Japan will not open its market to “agricultural products”. Well, if you were Japanese, would you? Rice is, as everyone knows, a staple crop throughout SE Asia, and what government would not want to protect its growers? It’s a matter of national food security. American farmers have every right to grow rice, but not rice subsidized by the taxpayers. I agree with the Cato Institute, and, were he alive today, so would Epicurus.