课程列表 - 笔果题库

Passage 1 Disputes over farm trade have bedevilled the current round of GATT talks from the start. That is unsurprising. For decades governments everywhere have suppressed market forces in agriculture with subsidies，tariffs, quotas ，monopoly purchasing boards and all the other paraphernalia of mule-headed intervention. On one plausible estimate，consumers in industrial countries pay $ 300 billion a year in taxes and higher prices to support farming. Even allowing for the income transferred to farmers, the net welfare loss caused by the industrial countries' farm policies is $ 100 billion a year. What exactly are those reforms of the common agricultural policy (CAP) that Europe's govern ments agreed to? On cereals，where Europe and America have squabbled most fiercely, the GATT's director-general suggested cuts of 20% in the value of the CAP's production subsidies. America said it would settle for nothing else. The EC then came up with a new plan to re-form the CAP. Its main idea is to replace some production subsidies with direct payments to farmers.In what way could “subsidies”suppress marked forces in the farm trade?