NEW YORK — The U.S. farm bill — a blanket term for all measures related to agriculture, some barely so — appears doomed this year. The House version passed at the end of July, but the Senate version has been stalled in such a way that there's even talk that its enactment may not occur until after the next administration takes over in 2009. The bill is rewritten every five years or so.
I noticed there was controversy over it last summer. A newspaper reported that a congressman from a farm state was calling for substantial reforms in U.S. agricultural policy because, among other things, he said, it harms America's trading partners.
That surprised me. For years I'd thought the U.S. attitude toward international matters was, "We can do this, but you can't," with agricultural trade policy typifying the approach. I recall, for example, Charlene Barshefsky, President Bill Clinton's Trade Representative from 1997 to 2001, pronouncing Japan's policy "destructive," even as America's own was garnering a good deal of criticism.