IDFA believes that multilateral negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) provide the best and most important opportunity to strengthen international trade rules to remove artificial advantages or protections and truly open markets for U.S. dairy products and dairy-containing foods.

Although regional and bilateral free trade agreements can also provide important trade-opening opportunities (as we have seen from the Mexican commitments under NAFTA), until distortions from European dairy subsidies are removed from the international marketplace, competition from subsidized dairy products will continue to disadvantage U.S. dairy foods exporters. The most effective means of eliminating the trade distortions of EU subsidies is through WTO reforms.

Goals for Current Round of Negotiations
IDFA is actively engaged in promoting ambitious negotiating objectives for the WTO agriculture talks, as well as the launch of a wider round of WTO negotiations that would enable a package of agricultural and non-agricultural reforms to provide the balance that is needed for ambitious results.

WTO Disputes and Settlements
The U.S. dairy industry could be affected by a range of obstacles to increased international trade within the global market, so IDFA closely monitors current disputes within the World Trade Organization (WTO). Current disputes that involve dairy include an EU push for geographic indicator protections for certain foods names, EU retaliation for a U.S. tax break program for exporters, and a sweetener tax in Mexico. In a recent success to a WTO dispute, IDFA and other dairy industry groups pressed U.S. officials several years ago to challenge Canada's dairy export pricing regime as a violation of WTO ceilings on export subsidies. Click here to find out more about WTO disputes that affect dairy.

U.S. Membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO)