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When the World Trade Organization’s 147 countries agreed on a framework for negotiations on July 31, trade negotiators knew there was hope for achieving an agreement after all.

After talks bogged down in Cancun last fall, negotiators weren’t sure if the talks would ever get unstuck. Now, some basic guidelines have been decided upon, and agriculture was key in getting those talks moving, according to Constance Jackson, OFBF vice president of agricultural ecology.

Now that a framework for negotiations has been approved, the next step involves deciding how soon countries will lower tariffs and domestic support and by how much.

Jackson said the framework focuses on three basic trade areas: domestic support, export subsidies and market access.

Under domestic support, countries agreed to reduce total trade distorting practices by about 20 percent in the first year of implementation. For the United States, that adds up to just more than $49 billion. Since the United States actually spends about $20 billion per year in domestic support, this 20 percent cut may have no practical effect on U.S. programs or farmers, according to the American Farm Bureau.

Jackson explained that developing and least developed countries would face lower levels of domestic support reductions with longer time frames to implement them. Jackson said the goal was to achieve as much harmonization as possible within all 147 countries in the WTO.

In another area of contention, countries agreed to eliminate export subsidies by a yet-to-be-agreed-upon date. "This was a big win for the United States," Jackson said.

The framework also calls for state trading enterprises, like the Canada Wheat Board, to be subject to disciplines to make them less trade distorting.

And developed and developing countries committed to substantial improvement in market access for all products. Least developed countries would be exempt from the market access commitments.

"This can also be viewed as good for the United States," Jackson said, as "we want to do what we can to increase the economies of the world’s least developed countries because that’s where our market is; that’s where our growth opportunities in the future are going to be."

She said the details in the agreement have yet to be hammered out. "Countries are going to be jockeying for position to start putting numbers in place," she said. "But the bottom line in this framework agreement is that now we’re talking to each other again."