Addressing Global Cotton Subsidies: Uprooting the Seeds of Poverty in Hong Kong and Beyond

International trade in cotton exemplifies the tilted playing field against developing countries in the context of agriculture. On the one hand we find some of the poorest (West and Central Africa) and largest (Brazil, China and India) developing countries in the world holding a competitive advantage in the production of raw cotton, while on the other, we have the US and EU spending billions of dollars annually in subsidies to prop up an otherwise inefficient and high-cost sector.

The pernicious impacts of these continued subsidies are now well established - resulting in depressed world cotton prices, lost market share for otherwise competitive producers and the concomitant loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in forgone export earnings. What remains a matter of intense debate however is exactly how, when, and where the impact of these subsidies should be addressed.

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